The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [119]
This was vintage Arzalluz. The head of the Basque Nationalist Party was always making wild accusations and later admitting that he had no proof. His party lived in terror of his next statement. Herri Batasuna made the same allegation as Arzalluz, but it too was always making accusations against the Spanish state. Another rumor was that wealthy Vizcayan businessmen sponsored GAL. There were always rumors in Basqueland.
The killings went on. The brother of the most wanted ETA leader was killed. The French state became more concerned about terrorism in Basqueland now that it was spreading to their provinces. In September 1984, after a series of meetings between the two governments, France agreed to extradite to Spain seven alleged directors of ETA. More extraditions followed. ETA responded with a campaign against French interests in Spain, not in France. ETA has always tried to keep the war out of France so that commandos would have a border to escape across.
On November 20, 1984, Santiago Brouard, a pediatrician, was killed in his Bilbao office by GAL. Brouard was the perfect go-between, both a respectable professional and a well-known leftist nationalist who had once gone into exile rather than betray a wounded ETArist he had treated. At the time of his killing, he had been trying to arrange negotiations between ETA and Madrid.
The public outrage over this assassination seemed to slow down GAL activities. Or was it a more cooperative France that made the difference? In 1986, France increased the number of Basque extraditions to Spain, even though it had been documented that Basques turned over to the Spanish on previous occasions had been tortured.
In 1986, after killing perhaps twenty-seven people, GAL vanished.
In 1987, the Madrid magazine Tiempo conducted a poll in which 52 percent of respondents said they believed the Spanish government had been behind GAL. But in what may offer a more telling insight into Spanish democracy, 51 percent approved of GAL’s killings.
WHERE WAS THE system of checks and balances that González had confidently predicted would prevent his abuse of power? For five years he was able to govern without any such impediments. Then the mystery of GAL began to unravel. After a traffic accident, incriminating documents were found in the car of José Amedo, a senior Spanish policeman. It appeared that he and another high-ranking officer, Michel Dominguez, had traveled frequently to French Basqueland with false identification papers. Arrested by Spain and wanted in France, the two confessed. Their 1989 trial, inevitably labeled “GALgate,” resulted in sentences of 108 years for both of them for organizing GAL and its killings.
GAL agents turned out to be mercenaries: an assortment of right-wing French military left over from the Algerian war, underworld hitmen from organized crime in Marseilles, former Portuguese colonialists, and Italian neo-Fascists. Once, in 1984, the French had even caught a GAL operative and identified him as a former member of the OAS, an infamous right-wing French military group from the early 1960s Algerian independence war. He was known to have been working for the Spanish government since Franco’s time.
Citing security concerns, Barrionuevo refused to make any comments on the case. He was widely thought to be the true author of GAL. The Amedo and Domínguez trial revealed that the two convicted GAL organizers had operated with money from the Ministry of Interior. Felipe González insisted, even in the 1990s, when the trail finally led to Barrionuevo, that he himself had known nothing about GAL. Although a member of his own party in Vizcaya as well as several GAL members implicated González, no one was able to mount a successful legal case against him. González claimed that the case was being pursued as a political attack against his party, which may be true, but would still not establish his innocence.
Barrionuevo’s undoing was that early Marey kidnapping. The reason Marey was taken was that the GAL kidnappers