Spain Tested Drug On Abducted People

Spain’s main intelligence agency kidnapped three street people in 1988 to test an experimental tranquilizer they hoped to use on a fugitive Basque separatist leader, a Madrid daily reported Tuesday.

The El Mundo newspaper, citing documents obtained from the intelligence agency CESID, said a beggar and two drug addicts were kidnapped off Madrid streets and given the anesthetic.

One of the three men later died from complications caused by the drug, the newspaper said.

The Basque separatist leader Josu Ternera was captured by French police in January 1989 at a hideout of the armed Basque separatist group ETA. The tranquilizer was not used on him.

Heading the kidnapping operation was CESID’s former chief Gen. Emilio Alonso Manglano.

Manglano is charged with organizing death squads that killed more than 26 alleged ETA supporters between 1983 and 1987.

Manglano, who resigned in 1995 as head of the civilian intelligence agency, testified Tuesday on charges that CESID illegally listened to telephone conversations of public figures, including King Juan Carlos.