Eta suspects were in fact holidaying Spanish firemen

Five people identified as Eta suspects in a surveillance video were in fact Catalan firefighters on holiday, the Spanish media reported on Saturday. Images from closed-circuit television released by France and Spain on Friday supposedly identified five members of the Basque separatist group, but in fact the young men were firemen on a climbing holiday.

Photo: Reuters

The images, taken on Monday, showed the five men at a supermarket in the town of Dammarie-les-Lys, near Paris.

But after receiving telephone calls from friends and family, the Catalonian firemen brought the case of mistaken identity to the attention of their fire department.

"This morning we contacted the French authorities to tell them that the images were those of people working as firemen for the Catalan regional government," a spokesperson for the fire service told the AFP news agency on Saturday.

The images were released to the media because French investigators had made them suspects in the murder of a French police officer earlier this week.

A retired policeman had heard the group of men at the supermarket speaking Spanish and contacted the authorities.

Jean-Serge Nérin, a 52-year-old father of four, was killed in a gun battle following a routine police check on Tuesday.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero blamed Eta on Wednesday and French police arrested a 27-year-old man, who identified himself as an Eta member.

Authorities are still searching for five other suspects, although Eta has not yet claimed responsibility for the attack.