PATRICK RIOU AND GAL DEATH SQUADS
 

Patrick Riou, 50, is currently head of the Police Judiciae in Paris.  Assumed that post  July 1, 1997, having taken over for the departed Oliver Foll.  Riou arrived at the accident scene at approximately 12:40 am, 15 minutes after the crash of the Mercedes carrying Diana.  Immediately took over security of the crash site.

Previous to being appointed to the Police Judiciae, Riou was head of the French-Spanish Anti-Terrorism Group, which was integral in the war against Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA, the Basque Homeland and Freedom group).  Revelation of his past activity as head of the French-Spanish counterterrorism forces would suggest that he had direct contact with GAL units within France. In other words, Patrick Riou himself may have been the head of a secret network of death squads capable of carrying out the murder of Princess Diana.

Paramilitary death squads known as GAL, which were run and financed by Spain's Ministry of Interior, directed a campaign of bombings, kidnapping, torture, and murder against Basque refugees in Northern Basque Country, under French administration, in 1983-1988. Hundreds of people, including children, were injured in GAL bomb attacks or shootings. More than 14 senior government officials, police and a Civil Guard general have been formally charged for their involvement in the death squads. The corpses of the first victims of GAL, Jose Ignacio Zabala and Jose Antonio Lasa, kidnapped in 1983, were found in 1995. They showed signs of extensive beatings and torture, including loss of teeth, finger and toe nails. They were killed by blows to the skull followed by shots in the back of the head. Their bodies were buried in quicklime.

An ongoing judicial inquiry is investigating allegations that the Spanish military intelligence agency CESID kidnapped vagrants for use as guines pigs to test drugs for use by security forces to kidnap suspected Basque activists in France and smuggle them back to Spain. The alleged experiments in 1988, in which one beggar died, were nicknamed "Operation Mengele" after the Nazi death-camp doctor Josef Mengele.

The "Anti-terrorism Groups of Liberation" (GAL)

GAL made its appearance shortly after the Zona Especial Norte (ZEN, Special Northern Zone) plan was put into effect in 1983.  The ZEN plan, coordinated by the police and political institutions, seeked the physical destruction of suspected ETA activists in Northern Basque Country under French administration.

The history of GAL is similar to that of its predecessors ATE and BVE. All paramilitary groups shared the same target: Basque activists. But unlike ATE and BVE, which were created and directed by the Spanish police, GAL was directed and financed by Spain's Ministry of Interior.

On June 14, 1984, France and Spain signed the "Acuerdos de la Castellana" (the Castellana Agreement), a cooperation agreement for stronger cooperation against the Basque resistance.

Shortly after the Franco-Spanish agreement, judges in Pau (France) and Madrid (Spain) acquitted GAL mercenaries accused of carrying out attacks against Basque refugees while Spain's media, as in Franco's time, remained silent. Right after the death by torture of Joxe Arregi in a police barracks, a Madrid newspaper, Diario 16, which now brags about having investigated GAL, included the following quote in its editorial of March 23, 1981:

“The activists of ETA, who are not men, who are beasts. To what degree do beasts deserve human rights?... Beasts are enclosed behind the heaviest bars that there are in the village; first they are hunted by all kinds of tricks. And if in the venture someone is killed, bad luck, or good luck... No human rights come into play when a tiger must be hunted. The tiger is searched after, is hounded, is captured, and if necessary is killed. Fifty ETA members might die in combat and the hands of Spain will continue to be clean of human blood. The policemen who will shoot  will be received as brave men".

During the last twenty years, the BVE, ATE and GAL committed 725 attacks, killed 67 people and critically injured more than 200, including several children.

Excerpted from Estado Español y Actividad Parapolicial (Acusación Popular en representación de los familiares de las Victimas del GAL, Euskal Herria, 1995)

Additional sources:

L'Express, 11 Sept., p. 25

Porgane, Roland Pierre and Michel Guricoix, "French Connection to Official
 Murder," Le Monde, 22 August 1995.

Basque Violence Metaphor and Sacrament, University of Nevada Press, (1988).

Vigden, Ben C., "A State of Terror," NEXUS, February-March, 1996, p. 16-17.

Webster, Paul, "Invisible Enemy Haunts Paris," The Guardian International, 3
 September 1995