Gunmen kill general

Press, 31 January 1984, Page 10

Gunmen kill general

NZPA-Reuter Madrid The Spanish Prime Minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, was to attend the funeral of Lieutenant-General Guillermo Quintana Lacaci today as a huge police search continues for his killers. General Quintana, the former head of the Madrid military region, was killed on Sunday despite 10 days of rigorous security checks in the capital by the police, who suspected that a top commando of the Basque separatist group, E.T.A., might strike. The killing was a blow for Mr Gonzalez’s Socialist Government, which has had limited success in dealing with E.T.A. The separatist group is fighting for an independent State in the Basque region. General Quintana died instantly when two men shot him three times in the head outside his home. His wife, Maria Elena, was hit in the leg and a retired colonel, Francisco

Gil Pachon, also accompanying him. was grazed by two shots. The police set up security checks on main roads out of the city, at railway stations, and at Barajas Airport. Security officials said that they thought E.T.A. (Basque Homeland and Freedom) had made the attack in revenge for a recent crackdown on its activists in Spain and in south-western France. The police found 13 cartridges of the type used by E.T.A. near the general’s body.

E.T.A. has claimed more than 240 lives since it took up arms in 1968. It killed 43 people last year. General Quintana, who was 67, and the sixth Spanish general to die violently since 1978, headed the Madrid military region from 1979 to 1982 and played a key role in stopping fellow officers from joining an abortive rebellion in February, 1982. The national congress of

the Opposition Popular Alliance Party held a minute's silence in honour of General Quintana a veteran of the Nationalist (General Franco's) side in the 1936-39 Spanish civil war and of the Blue Division which fought against the Russians with the Germans in World War 11.

The assassination coincided with a delicate process of reform in the traditionally conservative Armed Forces in which the Government is seeking to bring the command structure more firmly under civilian control.

Although Mr Gonzalez acknowledged recently that Basque violence could provide the most serious threat of a military take-over, political sources said that General Quintana’s killing by itself was not likely to set off any unrest. Spanish officers had grown hardened to guerrilla attacks and most seemed firmly committed to the democratic Government.