"dirty War Sewers Of France And Spain" -- Spanish State Assassination Squads At Work Again?

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Wednesday May 27, 2009 10:28 by Cormac Mac Gall - None

The disappearance of a Basque activist raises fears of a return to kidnappings, torture and assassination by Spanish state-sponsored groups with French state collusion

Jon Anza, claimed by ETA as one of their militants, has been missing for over a month. ETA claims the Spanish police knew of his membership and also that Spanish undercover police are very active in the northern Basque Country with the collusion of the French police. His disappearance raises fears of a return to the clandestine (and illegal) activities of assassination squads such as GAL operating with French state support.

Concern is being expressed in Basque and Basque solidarity circles over the disappearance of Jon Anza, an ex-political prisoner who had sought refuge outside the Spanish state within the northern Basque Country. The Basque separatist daily newspaper GARA reported that it has received a statement from the Basque armed organisation ETA stating that Jon Anza was a member of theirs and was on his way to meet them but did not keep the appointment and has disappeared from all his usual places. The ETA statement also accused the police of knowing of Jon Anza's involvement with them since early this year, as they had found informational material of ETA's on his computer on which they would also have found his fingerprints. The statement accused the police of concealing this fact for their own reasons.

ETA STATEMENT
According to the ETA statement, on the 18th April Jon Anza boarded a train in Bayonne with the destination of Toulouse; however, he never arrived at the arranged meeting-place. The statement went on to state that this was not first such incident in recent decades but that similar ones had resulted in the deaths of five activists: Joxi and Joxean, Anuk, Ttotto and Basajaun. “Now the disappearance of Jon brings us unavoidably to the disappearances (and not since found – CMG) of Pertur, Naparra and Popo Larre.” Last Saturday 1,300 people took part in a public protest in the northern Basque town of Baionne about Jon Anza's disappearance.

ETA's statement also drew attention to “extra-judicial detentions carried out by the Guardia Civil and other police seeking to recruit collaborators and informers and also the presence of undercover agents of the Guardia Civil in huge numbers from Bordeaux to Toulouse and from Landas to the Pyrenees. “All this is done with the full knowledge of the French Government,” continued the statement, “who seem intent on importing into the whole of France that which they call 'Spain's war'”. This leads the organisation to conclude that “as in the times of GAL,” there is now “French state collusion with Spanish police operations,” which the ETA statement says emanates “from the dirty war sewers of France and of Spain”.

GAL was a Spanish organisation which carried out clandestine and illegal detentions of Basque militants during the 1980s, especially within the French state, torturing and assassinating them and which was proved in later trials in Madrid to have been funded and directed by ministers of the PSOE (Labour Party) Spanish Government.

The ETA reference to secret Spanish police surveillance activities in the northern Basque country and to the disappearances of Basque activists goes a long way towards giving a possible rationale for the shooting of two such police by ETA militants in a car park in the northern Basque country fairly recently. Spanish authorities claimed that the police were there by coincidence while ETA released a statement that they had been following the militants concerned.

Basque solidarity activists in Ireland have for some time been condemning the legal and illegal collaboration between the French and Spanish states against Basque activists and have called on Irish people to protest about their actions and to increase the solidarity they extend to the Basque people in struggle. During Franco's years Basque activists found a refuge across the border in the northern Basque country and were tolerated by the French authorities. Many French saw them as political refugees from, or activists against a fascist-type dictatorship. They were also fondly remembered as Maquis who fought the German occupation of "southern France" and who helped many Allied personnel escape to freedom. This tolerance persisted until the PSOE (Spanish Labour Party) leadership came to an agreement with their governing counterparts in France and began to extradite Basques to their jurisdiction. Basque separatists have also alleged that the gendarmerie have handed over Basque refugees to the Guardia Civil of Spain at the border without going through any court process whatsoever, in violation of international law and indeed the laws of both states.