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The Paladin Group was a far-right organisation created in 1970 by ex-Nazi Otto Skorzeny. Related to the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), it conceived itself as the military arm of the anti-Communist struggle during the Cold War. The Nouvel Observateur magazine, of 23 September 1974, qualifies the group as a "strange temporary work agency of mercenaries" (étrange agence d’interim-barbouzes); in "The Great Heroin Coup" (1976), Henrik Krüger calls it a “fascist group” or "neo-fascist group", while Stuart Christie speaks of a "security consultancy group" in "Granny Made me an Anarchist". Finally, Lobster Magazine talks about a "small international squad of commandos".

Contents 1 1970 creation in Spain 2 Following Franco’s death in 1975 3 Actions 4 References 5 Bibliography 6 See also

The Paladin Group was created in 1970 in Albufereta, near Alicante in the South of Spain by colonel Otto Skorzeny, former SS, and member of the ODESSA network after the war, which exfiltrated Nazi war criminals to Spain, South America and others destinations. Skorzeny, who had worked for special operations for Nazi Germany, resided after the war in Spain, protected by Franco. His group recruited mainly mercenaries, former members of the OAS, which opposed itself to the March 1962 Evian Accords granting independence to Algeria by a terror campaign, the SAC, a Gaullist militia involved in shady operations, the ‘Légion étrangère’, former paragliders, etc.

Its chief of operations, Dr. Gerhard Hartmut von Schubert, former SS of the Propaganda Minister of Joseph Goebbels, once declared: “we have experts perfectly qualified in many missions all over the world” ^[1] Von Schubert became the head of the Paladin Group after Otto Skorzeny’s death in 1975.

Beside Franquist Spain, the Paladin Group was in relation with Salazar’s Portugal, the Greek Regime of the Colonels, as well as with Italy and the neo-fascists involved in the strategy of tension, which included various false flag terror attacks, alongside Propaganda Due (P2) masonesque lodge and Gladio, NATO’s clandestine stay-behind anti-Communist paramilitary network during the Cold War. The Paladin Group also held offices in Zurich, Switzerland ^[2].

According to investigative journalist Martin A. Lee, the Paladin Group has received missions from Colonel Agamemnon of the Greek secret services KYP, from Colonel Kadhafi, from South African secret services, as well as from the anti-Sionist commando headed by Waddi Haddad ^[3], French secret services by the intermediary of Jacques Foccart (whom both demanded and provided personnel), South Vietnameses, the Spanish state’s struggle against ETA (before the 1980 creation of the GAL death squads), but also industrials such as the British Cadbury, or the West German Rheinmetall, etc.

The arms dealing organised by Otto Skorzeny, owner of the Atlantico company, contributed to the financing of the group, while some operations were also financially supported by the CIA.

Otto Skorzeny died the same year as Franco, whose death on November 20, 1975 opened up the way for the transition to democracy. Neo-fascist groups hosted by Franco ceased to be welcome in the new regime: henceforth, they fled to South America, in particular Augusto Pinochet’s Chile and Argentina, where the return of Peron after a 20 years exile in Spain had been the site of the June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre.

The Paladin Group became a member of the Fascist International at his creation in 1976. This umbrella organisation connected together many different neo-fascist groups.

• December 1973 : the Paladin Group reinvidicates the bombing of Rome Fiumicino airport, which killed 32.
• 1974: Take-over of the Cabinda region, rich in petroleum, to the Angola headed by the MPLA supported by the Soviet Union.
• 1974: Assassination of ETA members.
• May 3, 1974: Kidnapping of Balthazar Suarez, director of the Banco Bilbao, in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Paris).
• May 1976: Assassination of General Joaquin Zenteno Anaya, ambassador of Bolivia in France.

• Stuart Christie, Granny Made me an Anarchist
• L'Express, 13 September 1976
• Henrik Krüger, The Great Heroin Coup : Drugs, Intelligence, and International Fascism, Boston : South End Press, 1980. 240 pages. (First published in Denmark under the tile : Smukke Serge og Heroinen en 1976.) ISBN 0896080315
• Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens, 1997. ISBN 0316519596 - (pages 185-6)
• Le Nouvel Observateur, 23 September 1974
• E. Gerdan, Dossier A ... comme Armes, édition Alain Moreau, 1975
• Le Monde 2, n° 60 - Special issue on Operation Condor
• Peter Dale Scott, Transnationalised Repression; Parafascism and the U.S., Lobster Magazine, N°12 : 1986.
• Frederic Laurent, L'Orchestre Noir, Stock, 1978.

• Otto Skorzeny
• Spain under Franco
• Paladin