The former prime minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, will don his long-forgotten lawyer's robes to defend his former interior minister, jailed last week for links to death sqauds hunting down Basque separatists.
According to yesterday's El Pais newspaper, he will represent Mr Jose Barrionuevo and his one-time deputy, Mr Rafael Vera, in an appeal to the Constitutional Court against their 10-year sentences.
The surprise move was revealed despite continued suspicion among parts of Spain's political class that Mr Gonzalez himself was connected to the so-called Anti-terrorist Liberation Groups (GAL).
However, he was absolved by a court in November 1996 of any responsibility in the "Dirty War" against the Basque separatists and in particular of having links to the squads, blamed for killing 28 members of the Basque ETA militant movement, mainly in southern France.
"The judgement will end up being annulled, and so the truth will in the end come out, from a legal point of view," Mr Gonzalez told El Pais.
The newspaper said he had been hurt by the condemnations and wanted to assure the men's defence so he could be at their sides "personally, politically and legally."
Mr Gonzalez qualified in law in 1964, but has not practised since the 1970s, when he specialised in labour law. He re-registered himself at the Madrid bar on Friday last.
Mr Barrionuevo and Mr Vera were among 12 defendants convicted last Wednesday of involvement in the 1983-1987 GAL campaign against ETA. Revelations about the GAL scandal helped bring down Mr Gonzalez's Socialists in 1996 elections.
El Pais said Mr Gonzalez intended to defend his clients all the way from the Constitutional Court to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if necessary. Six of the defendents including Mr Barrionuevo and Mr Vera, were found guilty of illegal detention and embezzlement of public funds in the 1983 kidnapping of a businessman. Five others, all but one of them ex-police officers, were found guilty of illegal detention with a twelfth found guilty of complicity in the detention.
The sentences ranged from two years and four months to 10 years in prison. A deputy in the ruling conservative Popular Party, Mr Manuel Nunez, described Mr Gonzalez's decision as "unheard of". He said it demonstrated "the unusual and strange way that he sees the independence of the judicial powers of the judges".