The U.S. government's move came despite arguments by Aldasoro's federal public defenders that he faces possible torture while awaiting trial on frame-up charges in Spain. The Spanish government claims that Aldasoro aided in the killing of a retired Spanish air force general and two cops in a mortar attack on a civil guard's barracks in 1988, and that he is a member of the ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty), which fights for the independence of the Basque country from Spain.

The Basque are an oppressed nation of about 3 million people who live in northern Spain and southern France. About 25 percent of the people in the Basque country, or Euskal Herria, speak Basque, although it is not recognized as an official language by either the French or Spanish governments.

Aldasoro was arrested on December 1, 1997, in Homestead, Florida, by the FBI's joint terrorism task force, working with the Spanish police agency Interpol and the U.S. State Department. He was imprisoned in Miami's Federal Detention Center until the extradition.

Defense attorneys explained that all of the Basque "witnesses" who initially implicated Aldasoro did so under torture and subsequently recanted their testimony. In 1998, federal judge James King in Miami ruled against extradition, agreeing that the evidence against Aldasoro was not credible. This ruling was overturned on appeals. This fall the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case.

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright seeking to block the extradition, defense lawyers said, "There is evidence of gross violations of the human rights of Basque detainees in Spain. A consistent pattern of violations justifies denial of extradition."  
 
 
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