The IRA used bombs and bullets…but as far as TheEye is aware they didn’t ever get as inventive as ETA who planned to assassinate judges with poisoned decent French brandy.

The leading antiterrorist judge Balthasar Garzon (pictured) was one of several intended targets in a plot foiled by authorities with the arrest of the group’s top military chief earlier this year.

Commando unit leader Jurdan Martitegi Lisaso, alias Arlas, was captured by police in southwestern France in April.

Documents found in his possession outlined plans to send an expensive bottle of cognac laced with lethal poison to Judge Garzon in the guise of a gift from an admiring female law student.

The accompanying note would praise the crusading judge for his work on some of his most high profile cases including his attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from Britain in 1998.

It marks the first time the terrorist organisation has attempted to use poison in its fight to establish an independent Basque nation encompassing parts of northwestern Spain and southwestern France. The organisation is blamed for 825 killings over the past four decades in its campaign of bombings and shootings.

The document, which was found shredded, outlined the plan to target Garzon and three other high court judges who have led investigations into ETA and helped ban political organisations linked to it.

“It would be a great achievement for the organisation,” said the document which was literally pieced together by investigators, according to Spanish newspaper El Pais.

The newspaper said Martitegi also had a list of other targets for assassination, including the newly elected president of the Basque regional government, Patxi Lopez.

Luckily TheEye drinks red wine rather than brandy as a rule. Would be rather nervous otherwise.