Guerrilla leader shot

Press, 1 September 1980, Page 7

Guerrilla leader shot

NZPA’Reuter Madrid The Spanish police have shot and .killed Abelardo Collazo Araujo, a leading member of tl.e Leftist guerrilla f . group.. Grapo, eight months after JMs escape from,a prison to. northern Spain: '. .. . The police said- that Collazo 'Araujo and another Grapo member, Jose Luis Fernandez Gonzalez, were approached and told to stop by members, of an. anti-guer-riria unit : near a central Madrid metro station. Collazo .Araujo produced a

gun, but before he could use it, he and -Fernandez Gonzalez were shot by policemen. Collazo Araujo died instantly and Gonzalez was seriously wounded, the police said.

The police said yesterday that they thought Collazo Araujo, arrested in February, 1977, for his part in the kidnapping earlier that year of a senior State official and an army general,, .was involved in the shooting in a Madrid street last month of an Army generail and his military police bodyguard. ■ General Arturo Criado

Amuhategui, Medical Direct-or-General of the Army* was only slightly wounded in the attack but his bodyguard later died. .

Last December, Collazo Araujo, aged 33, and four other Grapo leaders tunnelled their way out of Zamora Prison, The prison governor was blamed for lax security. and fired the day after the escape. : -- One of the five : escapees, Fernando Hierro Chomon, was recaptured in May in the North-western Spanish town of Vigo as he fled after a bank robbery.