HUMEURS NOIRES French Anarchist Federation B.P.79 59370 MONS EN BAROEUL FRANCE E-Mail: HumeursNoires@lifl.fr This come from the group REFLEX in France. REFLEX: Reseau d'Etude, de Formation, de Liaison contre l'Extreme-Droite et la Xenophobie This review (and the people act against racism, fascism, laws against migrants,cops murder...) REFLEX, 14 rue de NANTEUIL, 75015 PARIS, FRANCE Reflexes international n 1 (part 1/3) The Falanges of Black Disorder ====================== The custom of militants of the extreme right to go running across the battle fields to fight against communism is nothing new. Without mentioning Denikin's army or the foreign volunteers of the SS divisions, one can only state that the list of countries and conflicts that have attracted neo-fascist activities is long : Lebanon (with the Phalangists), Burma (with the Karens - a CatholiC national minority who affront the government), Angola (with Jonas Savimbi' s UNITA), South Africa, Rhodesia, Afghanistan, Iraq... and today Croatia. 1 At the end of 1991, French mercenaries joined the Croatian Black Legion (or the anti-terrorist special brigade), led and financed by a Croat, Mladen, alias Mladen the Black. The legion and its chief took their name from the colour of their uniforms. Mladen had lived for 7 years in Sweden where he ran a restaurant before returning in 1990 to Zagreb in croatia, where he established a travel agency and set up an import-export business for fruit and vegetables. He sold all his belongings for 550,000 DM to finance his military group. Among the French involved in this croatian Black Legion are some militants from the nationalist-revolutionary organisation Nouvelle Resistance: Nouvelle Resistance was fully established by summer 1991, and militants from the Rhtne-Alps region and Nice left for Croatia. The first to leave were two Lyonnais - a NR militant Damien Lamoue and a national-socialist called Stephane Pezon (aka the Falconer). Later, a group from Grenoble arriv ed in Croatia in the autumn, one of whom was the local NR leader Andre-Yves Beck. Militants from the south east and Angers have also fought in the Croatian ranks. Nouvelle Resistance has maintained a presence in Croatia since this time, even though its m ilitants have for the most part only stayed a few months. At the end of 1991, one of their militants, "Pierre Andre B." was seriously injured when a mortar shell exploded and a British nationalist-revolutionary "David C." was captured by Serb troops, tortured and executed. In July 1992, a member of NR' s executive bureau responsible for these activities (he had himself fought in Croatia2) made a tour of inspection of his comrades; on his return, he was summarily arrested and interrogated for 16 hours. Later, he explained that of the militants from NR engaged in Croatian combat, some had become paras, some had already fought and one of them had even been involved in the anti-communist guerrilla movement UNIT A. Spanish and Italian third positionist militants could also be found in Croatia, including Alemano, the ex-secretary general of the Youth Front, and a partisan of the Rauti tendency.3 The nationalist-revolutionary militants were also participating in humanitarian support: in effect, two of the principal leaders of Forum Provence, Thierry Mudry and his wife Christine Pigace (in her home life a teacher at the Institute for Political Studies in Aix-Marseille), organised from the beginning of 1993 humanitarian convoys (to take out the inj ured) via the association Secours Ambulancier de France and the association Bosnia which participated in summer 1993 in operation Mir Sada (Peace Now) with the Lyonnaise group Equilibre. In November 1991, Michel Faci turned up in croatia with his sidekick Nicolas Peucelle (alias M|ller4) to make contact with the Croatian Peoples' Party (HSP) and its army, the Croatian Defence Force (HOS - Hrvatske Oruzane Snage). The HSP is led by Dobroslav Paraga, who was formerly a militant student of human rights, several times imprisoned under Tito' s regime.5 The HSP claims itself as the heir to the nationalist Ustache movement. Some of the HSP militants even sport Ustachi insignia. The Ustache movement was created in 1929 by Ante Pavelic who was head of the new Croatian state from April 1941 to . 1945 6 In complete collaboration with the German army, the Ustache participated in persecutions against Jews and massacres of part of the Serb population. Faci and Peucelle were sent with other French combttants to Vinkovei as part of the unit of Tomislav Madi - who took the nickname Major Chikago because he had lived in this American city. In this unit of 60 to 90 men, also called the Condor Brigade, could also be found GErman, Austrian, Belgian and British volunteers. Faci set up a special group called the Jacques Doriot Brigade, named after the ancient leader of the French Communist Party (PCF) who in 1936 founded the Parti Populaire Frangais, then in 1941 the Legion des Voluntaires Frangais Contre le Bolchevisme (which fought on the Eastern Front before being integrated into the SS Division Charlemagne at the beginning of 1945). Doriot fought there in July 1941 and died on 22 February 1945, strafed by two aeroplanes, probably German.7 Faci was present in Croatia during the autumn-winter campaign of 1991 -92, and left during winter 1992. In December 1992, he was injured. A part of the logistics of Faci' s brigade (in particular "humanitarian aid") is conveyed in transit by an association called Slavonie Libre based in La Garenne-Colombes. This organisation is run by Faci, his brother Thierry, Bruno Renoult, an old associate of Faci8 and Jean-Michel Gateau. Gateau is the brother of Georges- Alain Gateau who was a member of the FANE (like Faci) then of the PNF then was linked to the Mouvement Nationaliste Revolutionnaire (third positionists). He has also been a regular pilgrim to Dixmuide and a diner at the anniversary dinners for Hitler's birth. Today, he is close to the Cercle Franco-Hispanique. This group of foreign volunteers has been ""at ease" since the start of 1993, president Franjo Tudjman having clearly decided to camouflage to too politically obvious units. In effect, he has attacked his extreme right wing: Dobroslav Paraga, leader of the HSP, was charged on 18 February 1993 of terrorist offences and three other members of his party (Ante Dzapic, Mile Dedakovic and Ante Prkacin) have been accused of activities against the Croatian state - including the creation of an army, the HOS, which ""has imperilled the constitutional order" by aim ing "to take civil and military power in Croatia". Paraga had previously been arrestedon 22November 1991 with his assistant Milan Vukovic after the commander of the defence of Vukovar (lieutenant-colonel Mile Dedakovic) had criticised the laxity of the government regarding the organisation of Vukovar's defence. Another French mercenary, Gaston Besson, aged 26, fought in the 6th baron of the HOS. He described Chikago as "" a furious madman who made us do anything, going straight across the lines and auacking the enemy at random, "" and spoke of the last months of the HOS on the front after : a tough campaign in November and December 1991 came ""a lull, the HOS militia began to receive less arms. At the end of March, the HQ of the HOS in Zagreb mysteriously blew up. It was the end of the HOS. On the front, I comanded a group of a dozen men. It ended very badly. All the group was mown down in an operation." After the liquidation of the HOS, the mercenaries and foreign volunteers were integrated into the Croatian National Guard (HVO) where Dominique Gay fought (an extreme right militant from the south of France, member of the Edelweiss group, which is close to the NEO). He was killed in June 1992 in Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the end of 1991, the first platoon of foreign volunteers was formed, commanded by the Spaniard Eduardo Flores .9 Flores, aged 33 , was, according to Searchlight magazine,lO born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, of a Spanish Catholic mother and a Hungarian Jewish father. Flores spent many years in Budapest where he was an active member of the Young Communists before doing his military service as a frontier guard at Budapest airport. In 1988-89, he began working for the correspondent of a Barcelonan rightist journal la Vanguardia, Ricardo Estarriol, elsewhere a member of Opus Dei, an extremely conservative Catholic order which was one of the pillars of Francoism. Estarriol and Flores often visited the Opus Dei offices in Vienna. Flores covered for this paper the events in Hungary, Albania and Slovenia. At the end of August 1991, he appeared in Croatia and joined the HVO. He was billeted near the Serb frontier in the village of Slovo, principally populated by people of Hungarian origin. W ith an American Croat, Johnny Kosic, and a Hungarian villager, they together prepared their plan for the international brigade, founded on 3 October 1991, and which was by the Tudjman regime. Many foreign volunteers joined this unit, like the elite Portuguese sniper Alejandro cunan Fernandez, the Spanish mercenary and sabotage and explosives expert Alejandro Hernandez Mora and the W elshman Stephen Hannock, formerly of the French Foreign Legion. There was strong suspicion directed towards Hannock and Flores regarding the death of two journalists: one of them was Swiss, Christian W|rtenberg, who was investigating the international brigade and the possible links between Flores and trafficking in arm s and drugs; the other was the British Paul Jenks, who was investigating the death of W|rtenberg. In June 1992, this group was amalgamated into the 108th Bosnian brigade of around 60 men, divided into 3 groups which comprised Germans, English , Canadians and French. Among the lauer was a Parisian aged 25, "Robert",ll who had already fought with the Karens then in Surinam with , the Bushnegroes, and "Frangois", a Frenchman aged 31 who died on 26 December 1 992. Another group from the extreme right participates in supporting the Croats: the Front National. The FN organises humanitarian support with the association Croatie Libre, based in Cagnes-sur-Mer and led by Dan iel Perrier, a local FN organiser in Cagnes-sur-Mer, and the lawyer Marie-Jose Bertozzi. This association organised a convoy in July 1 991, then again in November 1991. The formerFNMP Marie-France Stirbois went to Croatia with the lauer convoy. In November 1992, FN sympathisers in Vaucluse (Dominique B lin, former militant in Orange, Bronzoni of Carpentras and Serge Michel of V acqueras) organised a humanitarian convoy; on its retorn, they were intercepted by the Slovenian customs who found a cache of arms including Klashnikovs and grenades. Dominique Blin gave as a contact the address and phone number of the office in Orange of Jacques Bompart, the regional MP and leader of the FN in Vaucluse. Rene Monzat,1 2 using information published in Minute,13 re that around lO catholic nationalist students of the Cercle Saint-Louis in St-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet had left France for croatia at the end of september 1991, and even if the convoy was humanitarian, some of them had not ruled out remaining there. Monzat recalled that the Cercle Saint-Louis organised spouing activities on a weekly basis, including parachuting skills taught by an ex-O AS member, Colonel Chateau-Jobert. Also in autumn 1991, Remy and Michel Daillet, the two sons of the CDS MP for Manche Jean-Marie Daillet, were fighting in the HVO. Alain Sanders, of Solidarite and Present, was Catholic and was regularly going to like for example, during All Saints 1991. Then, he participated along with Bernard Anthony . Chretiente-Solidarite and for the FN), Thibault de la Tocnaye (member of the FN central committee and regional MP for the region of Provence-Alpes-Ctte d' Azur), Jean-Marie Le Chevalier (FN Euro-MP) and Jacques Barthelemy (a regular traveller to Croatia) in a which left from A 19 December 1991 . During trip, they met with Paraga and Mile Dedakovic of the HSP. Solidarity, which arms of support in (sponsorship of children, for the injured and a summer school from 17 July 1993 at Crikvenika the Dalmatian humanitarian as moral and political seems to be the main preoccupation of these Catholic military engagement ruled out by Francis "Croatia is an adventure... It's in Europe, only a few hours , and our young militants have the possibility to live a useful adventure thanks to humanitarian action or to live a military adventure ... This experience there when 2O years old, one should the opportunity to make it."15 Notes 1 the anterieur of extreme right militants, see thr first part of the book by Rene Monde sur la droite extreme", Editions, paris, 1992. 2. It appeared to be Andre-Grenoble. 3 . The daily paper La Truffe discovered in autumn 1991 that Italian mercenaries were using classified ads paper . The recruitment of activists was organised by the mov ment National Renaissance, led by the neo-fascist Andrea Insabato. 4 . Nicolas Peucelle was bow in 1963 in Berlin and was one of the first people to enter the presidential palace in Bucarest after the fall of Ceaucescu in December 1989. A year later, he left for lraq with Faci then returned without seeing combat. In February 1991, still with Faci, he formed the asociation Friends of lraq. Peucelle has two great passions; the cult of the god Thor and arms. He collaborates on militaria journals and collects arms (Rene Monzat, Enquetes sur la droite extreme, op. cit. p28). On 6 July 1991 at 2 o'clock in the mowing, the shed at Courbevoie where he kept part of his collection exploded and seriously injured a firefighter. Fighting in Slovenia, he mugged up a story and retuwed to France as a POW (Liberation, 25/7 /91). Despite being charged for involuntary injury and for infringing legislation on arms and explosives, he was released from prison very quickly, and in November 1991, he was once more to be found alongs ide Faci in Croatia. 5. According to Liberation, 23 and 24/l l/9l. 6. This proclaimed Croatian state after the victory of Germany over Yugoslavia included Bosnia-Herzegovina. 7. Pierre Milza, Le Fascisme, p76-77 and 149-150, Editions MA, Paris, 1986. 8. See panel on Faci. 9. Also known as Edouardo Roza Runtoflores. 10. Germany's Secret Balkan Plan, Searchlight no. 205, July 1992. 11. Apparently Gaston Besson, who wrote, with Marc Charuell, his account of the war in the Croatian ranks "putain de Guerre". 12. See Enquetes sur la droite extreme, op. cit. p31. 13. 9 October 1991. Minute is the weekly magazine of the FN. 14. In June 1993, they sought a hundred green berets for the Legion! 15. Present, 10 OCtober 1993. ****************************************************** from REFLEX via HumeursNoires@lifl.fr *******************************************************