Unproven claims link French hitman, CNI to Vidal-Quadras attack

Unproven claims link French hitman, CNI to Vidal-Quadras attack

The shooting targeting Alejo Vidal-Quadras has generated a narrative spreading faster than the investigation itself. According to this account, Spain's intelligence agency (CNI) already has a name: a "French" hitman with around fifty prior convictions. There is no official report, judicial ruling, or police confirmation to support this. Everything comes through messaging channels and is repeated as if it were an official incident report.

That the Vidal-Quadras attack has unidentified perpetrators is a fact. That those perpetrators are professionals hired by a foreign service or an internal apparatus is, for now, an hypothesis that no one has proven. The distance between these two things is exactly what separates an investigation from a story.

What supports the "French" hitman version

The attribution comes from messages spread on Alvise Pérez's Telegram channel, placing the intelligence center behind the identification. The central piece is a man attributed French nationality and a history of around fifty prior convictions. The same version claims he was detained two days earlier by agents linked to Zarzuela Palace, after "getting lost" on his way to the racetrack. From there to concluding that whoever detained him knew his intentions is a logical leap, and that leap sustains the entire story.

The second block is audiovisual material. A black Yamaha motorcycle would have been recorded over 25 kilometers after the escape, until a wasteland in Fuenlabrada where it was burned, at which point the driver continued in a second vehicle. The detail is uncomfortable for the story itself: if those images exist, reverse reconstruction would allow fixing where the motorcyclist came from, when the helmet was put on, and why previous route had passed.

Why is the CNI mentioned in the attack?

Because the circulated version places the intelligence center aware of the suspect before the shooting. The repeated question is simple: if they had located him, why wasn't he arrested beforehand instead of letting him circulate? The circulating answer also provides no proof, only an intuition about how security apparatuses work.

There is a precedent invoked several times in this conversation worth taking as what it is, a commonplace: the idea that in previous episodes the perpetrators ended up being informants for one service or another. This type of comparison proves nothing on its own, but explains why part of the public receives each version with suspicion already incorporated. Whoever controls the information controls the narrative.

Two arrests and no confirmed authorship

In the subsequent phase, two arrests appear: one in Granada and another in Málaga, both involving people of Spanish nationality. These are the only detainees listed in available material up to the date of this discussion. There is no record linking them officially to the "French" suspect nor attributing the physical execution of the attack to them.

This opens another front that complicates any clean reading: temporal coincidence allows sustaining two opposing narratives. One says the police arrived late; the other, that they arrived earlier than reported.

Iranian plot, drug trafficking, and inter-service rivalry

The hypothesis of a foreign service behind the attack carries the same problem as any theory of this kind: if true, the affected party would have protection and the matter wouldn't have remained an attempt. This reasoning, which isn't proof but common sense, is repeated insistently. Another is added: a government aligning with certain partners won't punish a third party if that risks an investiture.

Against it, something less epic and more earthly is pointed out: a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking and control of relationships and financing channels that needed keeping out of the spotlight. It's the explanation that best fits a common incivil profile and sloppy execution. A third line, more political, speaks of rivalry between state apparatuses and an investigation pogre contrary to some interests.

What to expect

With what is available, it is reasonable that the case resolves through facts rather than leaks. If the motorcycle recordings exist and are reversible, someone will eventually reconstruct the driver's previous week and the version will have to adjust. If they don't exist, the story will deflate without needing denials. In either scenario, there will still be those who have the answer before the police. That is indeed a pattern.