A new book about Spain's "dirty war" against ETA in the 1980s has many resonances with the "shadowy quagmire of our own recent past", the author and former Beirut hostage Brian Keenan said last night. He was speaking at the publication of Dirty War, Clean Hands by Irish Times journalist Paddy Woodworth, which details the three-year campaign during which the authorities in Madrid fought the Basque separatist group with counter-terrorism.
The period was summed up by the socialist former prime minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, in the phrase: "Democracy is defended in the sewers as well as in the salons." But in the past 15 years, says the book, the investigation into the scandal has "stretched the relationship between government and judiciary to breaking-point, and sent ministers and a general to prison".
Mr Keenan said the story referred us "back into ourselves" in its echoes of events such as Bloody Sunday, and the allegations of shoot-to-kill policies and collusion between security forces and paramilitaries.
The book would become a reference text in every university with a peace studies curriculum, he added, but it was also "much more" than that. Mr Woodworth's "deeply poignant personal analysis" prevented it becoming just another academic treatise, as did "the literary eye that observes the malign scenario through which he moves".
Referring to the "courage, integrity and persistence" attributed by the author to a magistrate investigating the affair, Mr Keenan said these qualities were also "mixed in the ink of every word in this book".
Mr Woodworth thanked the many people who spoke to him during research for the book, including members of Spain's socialist party, which he was "ashamed to say as a socialist" was responsible for the dirty war.
He also thanked The Irish Times for its "enormous" support of him since he began covering Spain for it in 1978, adding that despite the crowd gathered for last night's event, "Being obsessed with the Basque Country can be a rather lonely occupation."
