Last Wednesday, Defense Secretary Margarita Robles led the memorial service for the eight intelligence agents shot dead in Iraq two decades ago at the headquarters of the National Intelligence Center (CNI). The event took place behind closed doors, so cameras could not capture the emotional faces of the Spanish spies and the victims’ families.
On November 29, 2003, eight months after the United States invaded the country and claimed non-existent weapons of mass destruction, Alberto Martínez, José Merino, José Lucas, Ignacio Zanón, Alfonso Vega, Carlos Baró and José Carlos Rodríguez were caught an ambush by the Iraqi insurgency in Latifiya, 30 kilometers south of Baghdad. Although they fought to the last bullet, their pistols were powerless against their attackers’ longer-range Kalashnikovs. José Manuel Sánchez, who fled in search of help, was the only survivor.
A month and a half earlier, on October 9, another member of the CNI, José Antonio Bernal, was murdered at the door of his home in Baghdad. The death of these eight agents represents the greatest tragedy in the history of Spanish intelligence, a page written by the heroism of its protagonists but also by the accumulation of mistakes and betrayals that led to this fateful outcome.
In July 2007, more than three and a half years after the crime, the then director of the CNI, Alberto Saiz, ordered “to review the performance of the center”. [de inteligencia] in Iraq” and “promote the investigation” into the murders of its agents. The result of this work was recorded in a secret document from November of the same year, to which the media had access for the first time. This is a critical assessment of the CNI’s actions in the months after the invasion of Iraq and an assessment of the investigations carried out up to that point into those responsible for the attacks.
The document’s conclusions contain sharp self-criticism. “At the beginning of 2003, the organization of the center was in a phase of task definition and delimitation of responsibilities, which led to different criteria and dysfunctions,” he first admits and then specifies: “The organic structure of the center and the lack of one specific task force for Iraq led to overlaps and gaps.” That is, when the invasion was completed and Washington announced military victory, the CNI disbanded its crisis cell and the agents on the ground were left to the normal work of the intelligence service, “without any supervision to be considered when the situation deteriorated.” exceptional […]Coordination between agencies and their implementation capacity were considered sufficient[…]but it was not like that.”
As a consequence, he explains: “The clerk [responsable directo] “He carried out his duties with a significant degree of ignorance of what was being developed and decided at other levels of management”; “The Center always acted in accordance with the conditions of execution established by the Defense General Staff, which occasionally changed these conditions, forcing it to adapt on the fly”; while “the urgency of deploying the teams to the region meant that mission planning was not carried out in accordance with the challenges assumed.” These failures – lack of coordination, lack of planning, haste – prevented people from hearing the signals that threatened accelerated deterioration The report complains that warnings about security must be interpreted correctly and appropriate measures taken quickly.
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The presence of Spanish spies in Baghdad dates back to January 1993, when the Spanish embassy was closed and they were accredited directly to their Saddam Hussein counterparts. The relationship was so close that in October 2002 a high-level delegation from Iraqi intelligence visited the intelligence headquarters in Madrid, leading to a complaint from the CIA. When the Iraqi intelligence representative in Madrid was expelled along with the rest of the diplomatic staff, he was sent away with a gift.
For their part, the two CNI representatives in Baghdad who had remained in Spain during the invasion returned to Iraq in May, thinking the danger had passed. Alberto Martínez and José Antonio Bernal lived in the same houses. Its drivers, guards and service personnel were the same ones that Iraqi intelligence had long controlled.
“The durability of V16 [equipo del CNI en la capital iraquí]With the same components, it is considered one of the determining factors for the events that occurred later. Therefore, it was not considered a risk factor. [Sin embargo,] It is obvious that the Iraqi intelligence services had positioned themselves against the international coalition and could believe that the CNI had abused their trust because Spain was part of the coalition. Therefore, it was logical to assume that CNI members would be targeted,” the report said.
The Spanish spies “were fully identified as members of the CNI by their former interlocutors in the Iraqi service,” he points out, and the alarm must have been raised when a chain of attacks took place in Baghdad in August 2003, apparently “supported by Saddam’s former intelligence services.
The CNI deployed agents alongside Spanish troops stationed in Iraq, first in Diwaniya (July) and then in Najaf (August). Veteran Alberto Martínez led this second team because “he was the only person capable of responding to such an urgent mission.” According to the report, this was a “critical” error because Alberto was from his maintained previous levels of contact with Iraqi sources, “which enabled these services to do so at any time.” [secretos de Saddam] I located it [a él] and the rest of the CNI staff.” Furthermore, his “personal and professional situation had deteriorated greatly after three years in Baghdad,” he added. “All that was known in the center should have led to his immediate relief.” However, it was only decided to bring forward the relief, which never happened.
The murder of José Antonio Bernal was the final warning. On October 9, when the night watchman had already left and his replacement had not yet arrived, three people knocked on his door. A man dressed as a clergyman, whom the agent must have known, entered the interior. When Bernal realized they were trying to kidnap him, he ran but fell to the ground 50 meters from his house and was shot in the head. Investigators ruled out that the murder was motivated by personal motives or the work of ordinary criminals, and concluded that it was “a terrorist attack, with the authorship more likely lying with former members of the Iraqi intelligence service.”
The commission, which investigated the crime in the following weeks, warned that “a concrete and real threat existed and that an attack against members of the Center or Spanish interests could be repeated at any time” and made several recommendations. On November 26, three days before the ambush, some were accepted, such as the provision of armored cars for the CNI agents in Iraq (they never arrived because the delivery time was more than three months) or the improvement of security equipment. Communication. However, the 2007 report regrets that “no forceful measures were taken, such as the repatriation of personnel known to Iraqi intelligence services.”
The translator was arrested
Regarding the ambush that killed seven of its agents, the CNI investigation concluded that it was “prepared in advance, with accurate information at the time and clear identification of the target.” The attackers, the report said, were “former Iraqi intelligence agents” who “had an agent who spoke Spanish who they had introduced to the Spanish as a source.” He is said to have told them the route that the vehicles attacked in Lafitiya would follow.
The CNI suspected that the informant was Flayeh Al Mayali, a Spanish professor at the University of Baghdad and translator for Alberto Martínez, who was said to have spoken to him the same morning he died. On March 22, 2004, when he went to the Spanish military base in Diwaniya, he was arrested. During interrogation, according to the CNI report, he admitted that he had worked for Iraqi intelligence before the invasion under threat of death; However, he denied any involvement in the attack on Alberto Martínez and his companions. After three days of precautionary detention, he was handed over to American troops, who imprisoned him in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. But Washington was not concerned with solving the deaths of the Spanish spies, but rather with putting down the Iraqi uprising. Flayeh was released in February 2005 without ever being brought to trial and claimed to have suffered ill-treatment at the Spanish base, which the report denies. He was banned from entering European territory for ten years.
Beyond the alleged denunciation, the internal investigation concluded that “the events in Iraq were the result of a collective failure at the center.” […] Neither the structure nor the people holding positions of responsibility at the various levels were able to prevent, detect and neutralize the risk that the agents took in carrying out their mission in Iraq as the situation in the region changed .” He did not suggest clarifying responsibilities, but rather taking measures to ensure that something like this does not happen again.
They resisted until the last cartridge
November 29, 2003. 3:20 p.m. local time. The eight CNI agents return from Baghdad to Diwaniya in a Nissan Patrol and a Chevrolet. Near Latifiya, a white sedan pulls up from behind at full speed, firing two AK-47 rifles out of the side windows. The shots kill Martínez, the driver of the Nissan, and wound Lucas, who was sitting in the back seat. The Nissan lags behind and the sedan overtakes on the left and shoots at the Chevrolet. He kills Vega and injures Rodríguez in the head. The Chevrolet falls down an embankment and gets stuck in the mud. Baró called Baghdad and the Spanish base on his Thuraya without getting through. Speak to the CNI representative in Madrid and request urgent helicopter support. As he goes to transmit his coordinates, they start shooting at them from some nearby houses and communication is lost. With burst tires, Merino and Zanón approach in the Nissan and the limousine flees. They go down the embankment and meet Baró, who asks Sánchez to pass him the chargers and go find help. Baró lies down on the ground and begins firing shot after shot with his pistol at the attackers, but they are too far away and cannot reach them. Merino and Zanón join Baró and also open fire. As he walks away, Sánchez listens to the first one. “They hit me in the arm!” Finally he reaches the street where a crowd is cheering the attackers. The crowd surrounds him and tries to put him in a suitcase, but then a religious man takes his arm and gives him a kiss. People change their attitude and let him go. When Sánchez finally returns accompanied by US soldiers, “the bodies of the CNI members bear numerous bullet holes, evidence of the cruelty of the attackers and the resistance of the Spanish agents,” the report says.
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