One of his older brothers was José Antonio Etxebarrieta, a defense lawyer for Xabier Izko de la Iglesia in the Burgos Trials that took place in 1970.
The first part of the Assembly, held on the December 7th, 1966, in Gaztelu (Gipuzkoa), ratified the expulsion of the workers’ party member Patxi Iturrioz which was decided in advance by the Executive (leadership in exile), thus provoking the split of the workers’ faction into a new organization called ETA Berri (ETA nueva, in Spanish), later Komunistak, the embryo of what would later be the Communist Movement of Spain (MCE).
Likewise the activity of the organization was divided between four separate fronts: political, military, cultural, and workers’ concerns.
On June 7, 1968, the car in which Etxebarrieta and Iñaki Sarasketa were traveling was stopped at a Civil Guard checkpoint in Aduna (Guipúzcoa).
Fearing that they were discovered, Txabi Etxebarrieta got out of the car and shot the officer from behind, José Pardines Arcay.
ETA had not yet made the decision to carry out an armed struggle and because of this his partner that day, Sarasketa, years after stated:“I guess that the civil guard officer noticed that the registration plate was false.
After staying sheltered for some hours, they decided to abandon the parish house, being stopped immediately by agents of the Civil Guard that still did not know their identities.
[3] Iñaki Sarasketa was able to escape the shootout by holding the driver of a car at gunpoint, making him take him to the church of Errezil, where he hid out until he was detained the next day.
Sources close to the patriotic left of the Basque nationalist movement classify this death as an execution by the Civil Guard,[4] despite the contrary claims of Sarasketa:“In the same way that the amphetamines made him euphoric, two hours after they plunged him into a panic attack.
Also he realized I had no intention of harming him, so a few kilometers further he asked me to get out…And I continued walking…”[5]Afterwards Sarasketa was summoned to a Court Martial, the first since the Spanish Civil War, in which he was condemned to death.
The keepers of the capitalist order show their methods: Txabi Etebarrieta was removed from the car and without even asking for his documents he was handcuffed, put against the wall and killed with a shot to the heart, at point blank(...)”[8]The second of August, in retaliation for the death of Etxebarrieta and for being considered a torturer,[9] ETA assassinated the police commander Melitón Manzanas, which led to a state of emergency being declared in the Basque region.
Ten years after the events of Benta Haundi, ETA also assassinated sergeant Acedo Panizo, one of the members of the unit under whom Etxebarrieta died.