Spain: Interior Ministry officials investigated over GALmurders (feature)
01 May 1999
The National Audience in Madrid has ordered an investigation into high-ranking Interior Ministry officials, following evidence arising from the trial of Miguel Brescia. The Brescia case is one of a string of ongoing trials and investigations into crimes carried out by the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberation (GAL) and has led to broader questioning of the roles of the Spanish political, police and secret service institutions. GAL units were active in the French and Spanish Basque Country from 1983 to 1987. It carried out kidnappings and assassinations of known or suspected ETA members on behalf of the Interior Ministry, which was responsible for financing these operations from its "reserved funds". GAL membership included members of the Spanish police, Information Services of the Interior Ministry, secret service, military intelligence (CESID), Guardia Civil, as well as criminals, murderers, mercenaries, extreme right-wingers, former military and intelligence personnel, sometimes hired on an "ad-hoc" basis. Members of the French police and secret services were also involved.
Miguel Brescia received a 68 year sentence on 4 June for the murder of Christophe Matxikotte, a 60 year old farmer, and Catherine Brion, 16, who Brescia and another hired gunman machine-gunned to death in their vehicle in Bidarray (France) on 17 February 1986. It later emerged that they were not the intended targets of the attack but victims of one of several lethal "mistakes" on the part of GAL units. The trial was told that GAL was a terrorist group: ôwhich, due to its previous actions, brought fear and insecurity to inhabitants of French Basque Country locations, who were potential victims of its violent actions, as a result of their social and geographic position". The trial heard that Brescia was not a GAL member, but a hired mercenary.
The Audience has ordered further investigation into the roles played by the former State Secretary for Security, Rafael Vera, the former Director of State Security, Julian Sancristobal, the former government envoy to Navarra, Luis Roldan, the former regional president of Navarra, Gabriel Urralburu and the former deputy commissioner of police in Bilbao, Jose Amedo. Hitman Pierre Frugoli received a life sentence after his trial in December 1985 for participating in the killing of four members of ETA's military wing in Bayonne. In court he said that Amedo had contacted him, offering 200,000 francs for every attack he carried out, with a 100,000 francs bonus for everyone he killed, inextricably linking the police with GAL activities (see Statewatch vol 5 no 1).
Amedo is presently in jail in connection with the murder of Herri Batasuna leader Santiago Brouard, killed by a GAL unit on 20 November 1984. In the Brouard investigation, a former CESID agent (protected witness 2864) gave evidence to magistrates on 7 May. He confirmed that there was a meeting, attended by police and anti-terrorist authorities including Amedo, Sancristobal and lieutenant colonel Rafael Masa, in the Ercilla hotel in Bilbao on 6 December 1983, to discuss several assassination attempts. On 28 May, the National Audience in Madrid sentenced Ismael Miquel to 45 years in prison, after he was extradited from Thailand, where he had been convicted on drug smuggling charges. He was guilty of "involvement in an armed group", murder, possession of an arsenal of weapons and falsifying documents, in connection with the murder of Frenchman Robert Caplanne on 14 December 1985. Caplanne was mistaken for ETA militant Enrique Errasti Villar, and was shot near the "Royal" bar in Biarritz, and died 10 days later. The judgement stressed that the proceedings were closed but incomplete, as the Interior Ministry officials responsible for commissioning the crime, being part of GAL and ordering "the extermination of ETA members", were not identified.
These officials allegedly offered Miquel information about ETA members who should be assassinated, incl