Fascist Links with Mobsters Exposed

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Marc Frederiksen, chief of the neo-Nazi group FANE Over the last two years a number of Basque nationalists have been killed on French soil, while it has seemed to be impossible for the police to solve the crimes and unmask the killers.

Now however the killers are known. It is clear that international neofascist organisations have been recruiting a 'heavy mob' from • among the protessional criminal fraternity to carry out their murderous missions.

Four of them have been called to appear in front of the Assize Court in Pau. It has been proved that they carried out several murders on behalf of the extreme right wing in Spain, while French former members of the OAS served to keep the two sides in contact.

It was French gangsters who carried out the Hendaye killings on behalf of neo-fascist groups after being recruited by former OAS killers.

• One of the brains behind the gang was Joseph Zurita, a gangster who had previously been implicated in the Ben Barka affair and who had played an important part in maintaining contact between Spanish neo-fascist circles and professional criminals in the Marseilles area.

It is also widely suspected that Zurita, who had carried out a number of services for the French government, was involved in the Pierre Goldman killing.

Few were therefore surprised when Zurita, after being arrested in October was set at liberty soon after.

Nouvelles Litteraires' comments ironically that this may have been a little imprudent since two people who had offered to give evidence against him had been mysteriously killed.

It is being widely suggested that Zurita knew too much to be arrested.

While evidence continues to accumulate that the worldwide resurgence of fascist and neofascist groupings is being built by means of substantial financial and other forms of support from the ruling class, the CP's Morning Star recently gave front page coverage to a statement by Henri Busch, general secretary of the French police union FASP.

Busch, who had earlier revealed that a very large proportion of the now banned fascist grouping FANE were serving police officers, claimed that there was a major effort in progress to purge fascists from the FASP.

While we give our support to any trade union in expelling fascists and other enemies of the working class, the case of police unions is somewhat special. In particular as Trotskyists we would always point to the treacherous role of the Communist Party in France at every stage since the Second World War in turning workers' struggles away from the crucial task of destroying the apparatus of the state.

The Stalinists' efforts to portray the French police as capable of eliminating racism and fascism within their ranks serves at this stage only to divert attention from the need to explain to workers and racial minority groups the need to build defence organisations independent of the state. from the working class" , will now no doubt throw in his hand with Siles' UDP.

This bourgeois coalition has now been stripped of the CP support it had up to Octoberfollowing the Soviet Union's decision to recognise the Garcia elevated to a generalship.

Yet the junta continues to be plagued by rumours of rebellions, abusive phone calls from subalterns and the unexpected appearance of tanks in the main square of La Paz.