Madrid - The former Spanish prime minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, appearing as a witness, yesterday denied in court that he had authorised the 1980s "dirty war" against ETA, for which his then Interior Minister, and most of his anti-terrorist high command, are facing charges of membership of an armed gang, writes Paddy Woodworth.
"Nothing like that occurred to me," he told the Supreme Court, which has been hearing a kidnapping case against Mr Jose Barrionuevo, the former Interior Minister, and 11 others, for the past month. Ten of the accused men pleaded guilty to kidnapping a French-based businessman mistaken for an ETA leader. This was the first action of the so-called Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups (GAL), which killed 27 people in three years.
However, Mr Gonzalez said he had authorised, after the fact, an earlier kidnap attempt by Spanish police on French soil. Mr Barrionuevo publicly took responsibility for this incident when it occurred in 1983. Yet Mr Gonzalez insisted Mr Barrionuevo had "never, ever" proposed to him the idea of illegal actions against terrorist suspects in the south of France, and that he believed the former minister "had never had such an idea in his head".
He caused a small sensation by alleging that the magistrate who has most tirelessly investigated the dirty war had asked him to pardon the two policemen who have provided much of the evidence about it. This magistrate spent a short period in Mr Gonzalez's administration, and has been accused of acting out of rancour because of lack of promotion.
On Tuesday, the current conservative deputy prime minister, Mr Alvarez Cascos, had attributed, without supporting evidence, the "origins, organisation and financing" of the dirty war to Mr Gonzalez, highlighting the politicisation of a case which has done great damage to the credibility of both conservative and socialist politicians.