On September 9, 1985, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna “Comando Madrid” cell detonated a car bomb in Madrid, Spain, killing Eugene Kenneth Brown, a 45-year-old Johnson & Johnson executive from New Jersey. He remains the only American killed by the Basque separatist terrorist group, which murdered nearly 850 people between 1968 and 2011 — among them more than 340 civilians and hundreds of Spanish law enforcement officers. Nearly four decades later, 379 ETA cases remain unresolved.

Nonetheless, Spanish judicial authorities — not the current leftist national government — have now formally decided to demand the return of 14 ETA fugitives long protected by Venezuela’s Chavista regime.