Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación
The Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación , GAL for short , (German: anti-terrorist liberation groups ) were clandestine paramilitary groups that were active as death squads in Spain and France from 1983 to 1987 and aimed at combating the Basque underground organization ETA and Basque separatism had. The commandos carried the designation of an anti-terrorist unit , but acted themselves with terrorist means. They were responsible for the murders of 28 suspected ETA members or sympathizers, of whom it is known that around a third had no connection with the ETA. The GAL groups were created illegally by high officials of the Spanish government during the tenure of Socialist Prime Minister Felipe González . They were led, financed and sponsored by the Ministry of the Interior ( Ministerio del Interior de España ) for the fight against the ETA. After the activities of the GAL were discovered, the responsible interior minister and several high-ranking state officials were sentenced to long prison terms.
General
The GAL commandos carried out attacks on (actual and alleged) ETA members as well as on ETA sympathizers. The activities of the GAL commandos began with the kidnapping and subsequent murder of ETA activists José Antonio Lasa and José Ignacio Zabala in October 1983 and the kidnapping of Segundo Marey in 1984.
Together with his friend Lasa and other members of his ETA command, Zabala took part in an armed robbery in the Spanish Basque Country on behalf of ETA. The head of the command was arrested; Lasa and Zabala managed to escape to France. There they were kidnapped by the GAL militia on October 15, 1983 and interrogated for days under the direction of the general of the Guardia Civil and commanding officer of the Intxaurrondo barracks, Rodriguez Galindo. They were then shot in the neck without any legal process and buried in unslaked lime in Busot , Alicante , until their remains were discovered by a hunter in 1985. The bodies were not identified until 1995. Galindo, the two alleged lead performers, Dorado and Bayo, and others were later found guilty of kidnapping and murder in a lengthy and controversial trial and sentenced to long prison terms by the Audiencia Nacional de España .
The GAL attacks were mainly carried out on French territory . During their active period from 1983 to 1986, the GAL commandos committed a total of 28 murders, including on November 20, 1984 of Santi Brouard in Bilbao , leader of the Basque left-wing nationalist party Herri Batasuna . In retrospect, it turned out that more than a third of the GAL victims had no connection whatsoever to terrorism. This period of the Spanish state's anti-terror struggle is known in Spain as la guerra sucia ( dirty war ).
The fact that the background of the GAL activities in the 1980s became known and in particular the (partly court-proven, partly suspected) involvement of high-ranking members of the Spanish government up to the then Prime Minister González contributed significantly to the defeat of the Spanish Socialists ( PSOE ) in the parliamentary elections in Year 1996 contributed. Even after this defeat, however, the PSOE did not admit responsibility for the activities of the GAL.
During the trial of the GAL events, it was found that the GAL's assassinations and kidnappings were mainly carried out by French mercenaries hired by Spanish police officers. According to the investigators, the groups were financed from specially allocated funds and carried out by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior through intermediaries. Among other things, the socialist interior minister José Barrionuevo was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in 1998 for the activities of the GAL.
In connection with the processes for the GAL commands, a. convicted the following known persons:
- José Barrionuevo , Minister of the Interior.
- Rafael Vera , Director in charge of State Security.
- Ricardo García Damborenea , General Secretary of the PSOE in Vizcaya .
- Francisco Álvarez-Cascos , head of the fight against terrorism of the Spanish state.
- Miguel Planchuelo , head of the “Information Brigade” (Brigada de Información) in Bilbao .
- José Amedo , policeman.
Even before the GAL, armed groups were active in Spain - especially during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco - which focused on the fight against ETA. These include the Triple A, Batallón Vasco Español (BVE), Comandos Antimarxistas, Grupos Armados Españoles and Antiterrorismo ETA (ATE).
Some political observers believe that the GAL's actions indirectly helped ensure ETA's survival into the 1990s and beyond. The starting point of this view is that the involvement of the Spanish state in the activities of the GAL helped to consolidate the thesis, which was widespread among Basque nationalists, that there will be war between the Spanish state and the Basque Country even after the end of Franco's dictatorship. ETA always takes this position to justify its own terrorist attacks and in some cases has led to sympathy abroad.
On December 13, 2016, former GAL member Daniel Fernández Aceña was arrested by the Civil Guard in Segovia . He was sentenced to 29 years and 10 months in prison following the murder of French railroad worker Jean Pierre Leiba in 1984. After his release from prison, he traveled to Afghanistan , Syria and Palestine . Jihadist propaganda material was found in his apartment and he had radicalized himself and spread ISIS propaganda material on social media . According to information, he is considered extremely dangerous and is said to have planned an assassination attempt.
See also
literature
- Ingo Niebel: The Basque Country. Past and present of a political conflict. Promedia, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-85371-294-8 .
Web links
- Article in BBC News
- Article in the daily newspaper El País (span.)
- Judgment on the "Marey" case (span.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Spain's state-sponsored death squads ( English ) BBC . July 29, 1998. Retrieved October 2, 2008.
- ↑ "Un ex miembro de los GAL, detenido en Segovia por yihadismo". In: EL MUNDO of December 13, 2016