BAYONNE (AFP) -- French police said Friday they had arrested the brother of a jailed former leader of the armed Basque separatist group ETA, on charges of illegally entering the country.

Jon Garcia Gaztelu was arrested early Friday by road police in Saint Jean de Luz, near the Spanish border, after violating a ban on entering the country, police said.

According to the Basque prisoners' association Askatasuna, however, Gaztelu lives in the French town with his family.

Gaztelu was handed to the Spanish authorities and released later Friday in the Spanish border town of Irun, according to the prisoners' group.

His brother, Javier Garcia Gatzelu, 40, alias "Txapote", has been convicted on five accounts by the Spanish courts, receiving jail sentences of more than 100 years for a string of political murders and kidnappings.

For nearly four decades ETA has waged a bloody struggle for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France that has claimed more than 800 lives.