New documentary on assassination of 8 Spanish secret agents in Iraq

Shafaq News / On Monday, October 10, Movistar Plus+ premieres on demand the four-episode documentary series "The 8 of Iraq". It narrates the circumstances surrounding the assassination almost 19 years ago of eight Spanish secret agents from the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) stationed in Iraq as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Each 50-minute episode recreates "the tragedy of eight Spanish spies who risked their lives on a daily basis in a tremendously hostile environment with footage, testimonies from their bosses and colleagues, and an analysis by national and foreign experts. In the region of Mesopotamia, a very conflictive area for the forces of the multinational military coalition led by the United States and deployed in Iraq since 2003."

All aged between 36 and 49, they were on the lookout for information of interest, which they turned into intelligence reports. The main purpose of their daily work was to provide operational security for the Spanish troops sent to the area by the government of President José María Aznar, with the intention of preventing them from being the target of attacks, ambushes, shootings and deception by Iraqi resistance forces.

But it was they who were betrayed. Seven of the eight officers were shot dead on Saturday afternoon, 29 November 2003, in an ambush near the town of Latifiya, some 30 kilometres from Baghdad. They were travelling in two unarmoured all-terrain vehicles - a white Nissan Patrol and a blue Chevrolet Tahoe - on a road linking the Iraqi capital with Diwaniya, the latter city where the headquarters of the Spanish forces were located.

Surrounded and harassed from all sides by heavy rifle and possibly RPG-7 rocket fire, those who were not killed immediately faced their attackers with their pistols and a single submachine gun. Only one managed to escape with wounds and make it to safety, Warrant Officer José Manuel Sánchez Riera. The other seven perished in unequal combat.

The documentary series also describes how two months earlier another Spanish agent was killed in Iraq, Air Force 1st Sergeant José Antonio Bernal. On the morning of 9 October he was accosted outside his home in Baghdad and although he managed to escape the trap, he was pursued, shot and killed at point-blank range a few metres after he had fled. All the fallen were posthumously awarded the Military Merit Medal with red distinction by the government of President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which certifies that they died in combat action.

All of the above has been compiled with an enormous degree of detail, the result of many hours of conversations and interviews with CNI agents and relatives of the fallen, in the book based on real events, "Destrucción masiva. Nuestro hombre en Bagdad" -Roca Editorial, 2020- by the investigative journalist Fernando Rueda, author of numerous books on the CNI and considered to be Spain's leading specialist on espionage.

Next month will mark the 19th anniversary of the assassination of the eight CNI agents. Most probably, at the headquarters of the Intelligence Service on the outskirts of Madrid, its Secretary of State Director, Esperanza Casteleiro, will organise a ceremony in front of the monument erected in memory of all of them, to which their immediate families will be invited.

(Atalayar)