Spain Arrests Five in Madrid Bombings - Big Big Forums

Jolie Rouge · 03-14-2004, 01:44 AM

By CIARAN GILES

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...3&floc=NW_5-L2

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spain's interior ministry announced Saturday that five suspects - including three Moroccans possibly linked to extremist groups - were arrested in the Madrid bombings that killed at least 200 people.

The arrests were announced on the eve of national elections and came amid opposition charges that the government, which had blamed Basque separatists for the bombings, was concealing a connection between Islamic militants and Spain's worst terror attack.

``Tell us the truth,'' read a sign at a mass protest in Madrid that drew 2,000-3,000 people - many of whom blamed President Jose Maria Aznar for making Spain a target because he supported the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Other signs read, ``Aznar, it is your fault we are being killed'' and ``Aznar, your national and international policies are irresponsible and dangerous.''

The five were arrested in connection with a cell phone inside an explosives-packed gym bag found on one of the bombed commuter trains.

The other two suspects had Indian passports, a ministry spokesman said. Also being questioned were two Spanish citizens of Indian origin.

The suspects ``could be related to Moroccan extremist groups,'' Interior Minister Angel Acebes said. ``But we should not rule out anything. Police are still investigating all avenues. This opens an important avenue.''

Amid the developments, grieving relatives began burying some of the 200 dead.

Earlier, the interior ministry said that autopsies of the dead so far show no evidence of suicide bombings, suggesting that Islamic terrorists who use such tactics might not have been involved.

Acebes told a news conference that the Basque separatist group ETA was still the No. 1 suspect in Thursday's bombings, but the government has not ruled out al-Qaida, which had threatened to target U.S. allies from the Iraq war, including Spain.

``We are working intensely along both lines,'' Acebes said. ``The priority has to be the terrorist group that is most prominent in Spain.''

The Spanish radio station Cadena Ser, which is close to the opposition Socialist Party, quoted sources at the national intelligence agency CNI as saying agents were ``99 percent sure'' that Islamic militants, not Basque separatists, were behind the attacks.

The agents believe a 10-15 member cell placed the bombs on the trains and may have fled the country, Cadena Ser said, quoting unnamed sources at the CNI. But CNI director Jorge Dezcallar denied the report, telling the news agency Efe that agents do not favor one line of investigation over another.

The toll from Thursday's attacks rose to 200 on Saturday when a wounded man died in a hospital, Europa Press said, citing Spain's Health Ministry. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, only the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people in 2002 were deadlier.

As a cold drizzle fell on Madrid, what would normally be a day of leisure and reflection before the parliamentary elections instead brought more anguish and mourning. Families started burying and cremating their dead.

Madrid's biggest funeral home, Tanatorio Sur, was so overcrowded that some coffins were placed in a room normally used for staff meetings. Outside, hearses carried coffins in and out all morning.

Investigators were focusing on a stolen white van found in the town of Alcala de Henares outside Madrid hours after the blasts. Police found detonators and an Arabic-language cassette tape with Quranic verses inside. Alcala de Henares is the town where three of the four bombed trains originated.

A doorman told police he saw three young men carrying knapsacks toward the station in Alcala de Henares, a senior police official said Saturday on condition of anonymity. Officials have said the bombs used in the train attacks were concealed in knapsacks.

The doorman saw the men get out of the van and ``walk toward the train carrying backpacks and he was struck by the fact that they were wearing ski masks when the weather was not suited for that kind of clothing,'' the official said.

``It is one of the main focuses of the investigation,'' the official said. ``It is very important.''

A London-based Arabic newspaper also received a claim of responsibility in al-Qaida's name that called the attack ``part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam.''

The attack's lethal coordination and timing - 10 explosions within 15 minutes - suggested al-Qaida. But the compressed dynamite used in the backpack bombs is an explosive favored by ETA.

ETA issued an apparently unprecedented denial Friday, saying it had nothing to do with the bombings. It has claimed responsibility for more than 800 deaths since 1968 in its fight for an independent state in the northern Basque region.

Debate on who is behind the attacks could sway voters in Sunday's election.

If ETA is deemed responsible, that could boost support for Mariano Rajoy, Aznar's hand-picked candidate to succeed him as prime minister. Both have supported a crackdown on ETA, ruling out talks and backing a ban on ETA's political wing, Batasuna.

However, if Thursday's bombings are seen by voters as the work of al-Qaida, that could draw their attention to Aznar's vastly unpopular decision to endorse the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and deploy Spanish troops there.

Opinion polls have put Rajoy 3-5 percentage points ahead of Socialist candidate Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. No surveys have been released since the attacks.

Aznar, in power since 1996, is honoring a pledge not to seek a third term, saying he wants renewal in government and his party.

In a show of national unity, massive crowds gathered in Barcelona, Seville, Valencia and even in Spain's Canary Islands off western Africa on Friday night to protest the attack. State TV said nationwide, more than 11 million marched - one-quarter of Spain's 42 million people. In Madrid, black bows of mourning dotted the city, on shop windows, on flags draped from balconies, and on lapels.

Spanish radio station Cadena Ser broadcast a 12-second recording of an unidentified woman who had called a colleague's voice mail after an initial blast on a train at the Atocha station. The woman, who survived, was in the process of fleeing as she frantically says: ``I'm in Atocha. There's a bomb on the train! We had to -'' and then two more blasts are heard.

03/13/04 15:19

Jolie Rouge · 03-16-2004, 01:16 AM

Spain's Troops Heading Out of Iraq Under Zapatero
By Andrew Cawthorne

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/enh...20040315BAG215

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's incoming leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero indicated Monday he would pull his troops out of the "disastrous" occupation of Iraq in a major swing from his predecessor's pro-American foreign policy.

The European Union (EU), concerned by growing signs that Thursday's Madrid train bombings may have been carried out by Islamist militants, called emergency counter-terrorism talks.

Zapatero's Socialists swept to office Sunday in a shock victory over Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's conservatives. Some analysts said it could be an alarming first case of Islamist militants influencing, by violence, the outcome of a major Western election.
But Zapatero called his triumph a first consequence of the Iraq war's unpopularity with Spaniards.

"The second will be that the Spanish troops will come back," he told a Spanish radio station. "Mr Blair and Mr Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism... you can't organize a war with lies," he said in remarkably frank comments for the next prime minister of Western Europe's youngest democracy and fifth largest economy.

President Bush called to congratulate 43-year-old Zapatero. "The two leaders said they both looked forward to working together, particularly on our shared commitment to fighting terrorism," a White House spokesman said. Bush did not ask about a Spanish troop withdrawal.

Zapatero, due to take office within the next month, repeated several times Monday his campaign pledge to pull out troops unless the United Nations takes charge in Iraq by mid-year -- a shift in control that he said was unlikely.

A U.S. official, who asked not to be named, said Washington could push for a new U.N. resolution before it hands back sovereignty to Iraqis by the end of June, to encourage allies such as Spain to keep their troops in Iraq.

Spain has 1,300 soldiers in parts of south-central Iraq. Critics of the government have argued that the Madrid bombings were the price Spain paid for backing the Iraq occupation.

"We have been very clear about the risk and the threat that we were all facing with this illegal war in Iraq, and unfortunately Spain has paid the price," Spain's likely next foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told Reuters.

"The sooner we admit that the wrong policy has been made, the better for the future of the international community."

RANCOR REMAINS OVER ETA BLAME

Most commentators saw Zapatero's shock election victory as driven by anger over Aznar's handling of the suspected al Qaeda attack on Madrid commuter trains that also wounded 1,500 people. After Thursday's attacks Aznar's government initially blamed the armed Basque separatist group ETA, which denied involvement.

Sunday would go down in history as "the day when Islamic fundamentalism was seen as dictating the outcome of a European election," said Wilfried Martens, head of the European People's Party, an umbrella group for European conservative parties.

With almost all votes counted, the Socialists had won 42.6 percent of the vote to 37.6 percent for Aznar's Popular Party. With 164 seats in the lower house of parliament, 12 short of an absolute majority, Zapatero has said he intends to govern through dialogue with other groups. He ruled out the possibility of a coalition with regional parties.

But the PP will remain by far the largest single force in the upper house or Senate, potentially making it difficult for a Socialist government to pass legislation.

MARKETS HURT

The Spanish stock market dropped sharply Monday amid mounting suspicions of al Qaeda involvement in the bombings and uncertainties over the Socialist party's economic agenda. Some 12 billion euros was wiped from the value of leading companies.

But in a nod to investors in Spain, Zapatero lined up well-known free-marketeer Miguel Sebastian as his chief economic advisor. Sebastian is tipped to take the economy ministry.

Zapatero said his immediate priorities would be fighting terrorism and a more "pro-European" foreign policy.

The EU's Irish presidency announced that EU justice and interior ministers would hold emergency counter-terrorism talks in Brussels Friday at Germany's request.

Zapatero's surprise win has changed the EU's balance of power, robbing pro-U.S. supporters of the Iraq war, led by Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, of an important ally.

It may also open the way for compromise on a stalled EU constitution blocked by Aznar to defend Spain's voting power.

Aznar's closeness to Blair and Bush was unpopular at home.

Zapatero said he wanted "cordial" ties with Washington but "magnificent" relations with France and Germany.

Sunday, Spain said it had a videotape, purportedly from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, saying it carried out the attacks to punish Madrid for backing the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

El Pais newspaper said Spanish police suspected the bombings were carried out by a radical Islamist group, with indirect ties to al Qaeda, which also killed dozens in a series of blasts in Morocco last year.

03/15/04 13:56

Jolie Rouge · 03-17-2004, 12:17 AM

World Shudders at Spain's Attack Fallout

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ts_nm/spain_dc

By Andrew Cawthorne

MADRID (Reuters) - As a traumatized Spain hunted its attackers and buried its dead, the impact of the Madrid bombings was still being felt more and more around the world.

With Europe struggling to digest the consequences of what looks like the first al Qaeda-style attack in the West since September 11, France was threatened with a possible attack by an Islamist group named after a dead Chechen guerrilla.

In London, the police chief spoke of the "inevitability" that Europe's biggest city would suffer some form of attack.

The main object of Islamist militants' wrath, the United States, urged Spain and other allies not to withdraw troops from Iraq (news - web sites). But Spain's new Socialist leaders, elected on Sunday, plan to ditch their predecessors' U.S. alliance which many voters blamed for provoking the pre-election attacks.

Outgoing Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio summed up global fears at a memorial service on Tuesday in Morocco, home of eight of the main suspects in last Thursday's train bombings that killed 201 people and wounded nearly 1,700.

"We were all in those trains blown apart by hatred," she said. "Those who think they can find a safe haven from terrorism delude themselves."

Spanish media said police were looking for five Moroccan men, part of a group of eight main suspects in Spain's worst attack. Three Moroccan suspects have already been detained.

One of the three detained Moroccans has been named as Jamal Zougam. Police sources told Reuters bomb survivors had identified him from photographs as having been on board one of the trains but they were treating witness reports cautiously.

There were reports Zougam had connections with some of those arrested for last May's bombings in Casablanca that killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers. But in Rabat, Moroccan authorities said no direct links had been established.

Police from across Europe are to convene in Madrid in the coming days to share information, and Spain and Morocco have already sent investigative teams to each other's countries.

"TERROR AND REMORSE"

In France, a letter sent on Tuesday by a shadowy group to several newspapers threatened "to plunge France into terror and remorse and spill blood outside its frontiers."

The government confirmed the letter mentioned possible attacks in France and against French interests abroad.

The group called itself the Movsar Barayev Commando, an apparent reference to the militant who organized the October 2002 Chechen hostage-taking at a Moscow theater that ended with 129 dead. He died in the special forces raid on the theater.

"We have to keep calm. We are in a country which must not be afraid," Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said.

In the United States, the White House urged Madrid and other military partners to stay the course in the Iraq occupation.

Washington said it may seek a new U.N. resolution that could help persuade Spain's newly elected Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero not to carry out his threat to withdraw Spanish forces in the wake of the Madrid attack.

"It's essential that we remain side-by-side with the Iraqi people," Bush said. "Al Qaeda wants us out of Iraq."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan cautioned Spaniards and others against sending a "terrible message" by letting "terrorists" influence their elections and policies.

MEMORIES OF DEAD

La Almudena cathedral had to shut its doors after 3,000 grieving Spaniards packed inside for a memorial service.

"I go to bed every night and I still see her looking at me. I have to pray," said Enriqueta Ermelinda Gomes, 28, from Guinea Bissau, who lost her best friend in the blasts and goes to church in the middle of the night to cope with her grief.

She, like hundreds, stood outside praying in the dark.

Outside Madrid, in the commuter town of Alcala de Henares -- which lost about 40 people and where the bombs were suspected to have been put on three of the four trains hit -- residents held a silent evening march to protest against the violence.

Some carried photos of victims, others candles. Many wept as they walked under the old walls of an historic town that is the birthplace of Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes.

Thursday's bombs, which authorities initially blamed on armed Basque separatists ETA, revived popular anger at Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's support for the U.S.-led Iraq war, helping Zapatero to a surprise victory. "This was the price that fell in blood on the head of Mr Aznar," Spain's leading film director Pedro Almodovar told a news conference, welcoming the political sea-change.

(Additional reporting by Emma Ross-Thomas, Emma Graham-Harrison and Estelle Shirbon in Madrid, Gilles Trequesser in Rabat, Gerard Bon in Paris, Adam Entous in Washington)