French hunt body of abducted Spanish industrialist

MADRID – Police in France are searching for the body of a Spanish industrialist who was kidnapped in 1995 by a shadowy left-wing Spanish group, judicial sources in Madrid said Tuesday.

One of the leaders of the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups (GRAPO), Fernando Silva Sande, told police in November that Publio Cordon died accidently in France shortly after he was kidnapped.

Following the confession, a Spanish judge reopened the case and requested a search for the body in southwest France, the sources said.

Silva Sande had previously insisted that Cordon was released after the payment of a ransom of 400 million pesetas (EUR 2.4 million), but the industrialist was never found.

Cordon was kidnapped in June 1995 in the northern Spanish city of Zaragosa, and the case drew widespread publicity. Silva Sande was convicted of the kidnapping in December 2007.

The Marxist group GRAPO was set up in 1975, weeks after the death of Spain’s right-wing dictator Francisco Franco.

The group was accused of some 1,000 acts of violence between 1975 and 2003, including 80 killings and attempted murders and 339 bombings and attempted bombings.

AFP / Expatica