Five canisters of explosives, probably constituting a "former cache" of the Basque separatist organization ETA, were discovered at the end of July in Accous, a mountain town in Béarn, the Pau prosecutor's office said on Saturday.
These old explosives, discovered on July 29 by a farmer in a stone wall bordering an isolated plot of this town in the Aspe valley, were then "removed" by a team of deminers, added the public prosecutor of Pau Cécile Gensac, confirming information from the Sud-Ouest newspaper.
According to the mayor of Accous Dany Barraud, who visited the site the evening of the discovery, the mention "ammonium nitrate" and the weight were written in Basque on all the "jerricans", estimated at around thirty kilograms each.
This "probable former ETA cache" according to the prosecution, is "in an area where people leave their vehicles for hikes or summer pastures", a sector "regularly bogged down, which could have been much more serious in the event badly controlled burning", explained the mayor.
Ecobuage, or prescribed burning, is an agricultural practice that consists of burning part of the dry vegetation to enrich the soil with the ash generated.
The Pau prosecutor's office has relinquished the investigation in favor of the national anti-terrorist prosecutor's office.
Created in 1959 under the Spanish dictatorship of Franco, ETA is accused of having killed at least 853 people during four decades of violence in the name of the independence of the Basque Country.
In 2018, the organization announced its self-dissolution, after laying down its arms.
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Justice
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Company
Bearn
Eta
Explosive
Paul
Anti-terrorism
Aquitaine