Killing derails Spain election campaign

MADRID — Spain's two main political parties abruptly curtailed campaigning for Sunday's general election after a gunman suspected of belonging to the Basque militant group ETA killed a former city councilman in northern Spain on Friday.

The attack and the ensuing disruption of the campaign were particularly disturbing for Spain because of their timing, just short of the fourth anniversary of the March 11, 2004, Islamist bombing of the Madrid commuter train system, which left 191 people dead three days before Spain's last general election.

Then, the conservative government's insistence that ETA was responsible for one of Europe's deadliest terrorist attacks — despite mounting evidence to the contrary — angered voters who felt that they had been misled. They turned out in record numbers to elect the Socialist contender, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, as prime minister.

"Today, terrorists tried to interfere in the peaceful demonstration of the will of the people as they go to the polls," Zapatero said during a televised statement. "We will not permit it today. We will never permit it."

The slain man, Isaias Carrasco, 42, a former Socialist representative and father of three, was shot several times in the torso and neck at close range as he left his apartment in the working-class town of Arrasate, according to Spanish authorities. Local press reports said that Carrasco, who was a councilman until last year, worked in a highway tollbooth.

A man wearing a false beard shot Carrasco before fleeing in a gray car, leaving the victim's wife and daughter screaming "Daddy" and "murderer" as they bent over his body, according to news service reports and a witness's account broadcast on CNN's Spanish-language service.

In a televised briefing, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba blamed a lone ETA shooter for the murder. "ETA has killed a Socialist former councilman," Rubalcaba said, calling the murder a "vile and cowardly act."

Rubalcaba, who said last month that he expected ETA to try to stage an attack before the election, did not offer any evidence for his claim that it was responsible for Carrasco's death.

Neither Rubalcaba nor any other Spanish official explained why ETA would have targeted a little-known former local official.

But Kepa Aulestia, a newspaper columnist and former member of ETA, said that Carrasco would have been an easy target.

"It was clear that ETA wanted to get someone during this campaign and it managed to do that today, probably because it managed to catch someone who was undefended and with no bodyguard," Aulestia said in a telephone interview from Bilbao.