Jean-Pierre Cherid

Who was Jean-Pierre Cherid?

Jean-Pierre Cherid was a far right French activist and later mercenary of Moroccan descent. A former French paratrooper, he first became a member of the Organisation de l'armée secrète during the Algerian War.

Afterwards, Cherid appeared in Spain in 1976. He was one of the far-right mercenaries hired by Spanish secret services to take part in the 1976 Montejurra massacre against left-wing Carlist Party. Since then, Cherid remained related to the members of the intelligence services belonging to the Spanish secret services and security forces that organized an illegal war against ETA in the French Basque Country, under different denominations during Union of the Democratic Centre administrations. He took part in the 1978 assassination of Argala, a member of ETA who had participated to the 1973 assassination of Francisco Franco's Prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco. This time, however, no organization claimed responsibility for the killing. In 1979, he led a squad that attempted unsuccessfully to murder an ETA activist, Txomin, in Biarritz. Some months later, his squad murdered another ETA activist, Enrique Álvarez, "Korta", in Bayonne.