Recently-arrested drug traffickers in Spain have been connected to state sponsored death squads from the 1980s – and activists say the story is being buried by national media outlets.Earlier this year seven allegedly heavily-armed cocaine traffickers were detained in a Madrid-based operation which saw widespread coverage from mainstream sources. However links between several of the men and the Anti-Terrorist Liberation Group (GAL), which assassinated dozens of members of left-wing Basque independence organisation ETA during the ’80s, have been routinely ignored. ETA activists identified the men after their pictures appeared in the press as being among some of the most notorious killers of the period.
Former civil guard Jose Manuel Velázquez Soriano was arrested for his role in a sophisticated operation in which his crew robbed other traffickers, then cut and resold the proceeds.
Velázquez, who was also a bodyguard of President Franco Arias Navarro, is known to have participated in bombings and riots staged by the ultra-rightist Fuerza Nueva and belonged to the so-called Viking Youth organisation.
Also detained was Laborda Jorge Porta, who had allegedly been trying to smuggle 405 litres of liquid cocaine into the country.
Laborda, founder of the far-right Catalan Militia, had recently been released from jail after his botched 1985 murder of Frenchman Robert Caplanne, who he had mistakenly identified as a Basque political refugee. That killing was overseen by Ismael Gutiérrez Miquel, the leader of GAL Catalan who has since himself been jailed for drug trafficking in Thailand. It is thought the pair retained contact during this period.
The GAL Catalan plot recruited ultras close to the neo-Nazi CEDADE in a failed attempt to divert attention and pretend that the dirty war came from the ranks of the extreme right. GAL’s old network is widely believed to be the kernel of some of the largest drug-smuggling operations on the Catalan coast, having established trafficking to fund the organisation while it was still engaging ETA. The group remained largely untouched after its ‘closure’ in 1987, with only one in ten of those linked to it seeing jail time and many receiving substantial payoffs and pensions from the government.
