Paul Barril
French military officer
Paul Barril (13 April 1946 in Vinay, Isère) is a former officer of the French Gendarmerie Nationale. He authored several books about his military career, touching sensitive political subjects of the Mitterrand era.
Barril was a gendarme until 1995. He was the second officer of the GIGN Special Forces unit for 10 years, before being involved in the creation of the Counterterrorist Cell of the Élysée during François Mitterrand's first mandate from 1981 to 1988. Since then, he has led several private security companies. He has been in the centre of controversies for his role in Africa, particularly in Rwanda during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 during which extremist Hutus mass exterminated hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Military career
Barril was second officer of the GIGN from 1974 to 1982, as aid to commandant Christian Prouteau. In late 1979, he was dispatched to Saudi Arabia to help the Saudi government quell the Grand Mosque Seizure, an uprising at Islam's holiest shrine in Mecca that was led by fundamentalist preacher Juhayman al-Otaibi. Barril was interim commander of the GIGN in 1982-1983, while commandant Prouteau was organising the GSPR, a presidential security unit. Barril claims to having "arrested 115 people, being involved in the surrender of 61 madmen, neutralised 17 armed people without using weapons, and freed over 450 hostages."
After a car bomb explosion near a restaurant in Rue Marbeuf in Paris on 22 April 1982, Barril and Prouteau were involved in the creation of the Counterterrorist Cell of the Élysée, along with Prouteau.
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