SPAIN: Question of Who Was Responsible for Attacks Will Influence Elections

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Tito Drago

MADRID, Mar 13 2004 (IPS) - The outcome of Spain’s elections Sunday will be influenced by the question of who was responsible for the brutal terror attacks that left 200 dead and more than 1,400 wounded Thursday in Madrid.

The outcome of Spain’s elections Sunday will be influenced by the question of who was responsible for the brutal terror attacks that left 200 dead and more than 1,400 wounded Thursday in Madrid.

If before voters go to the polls, investigators turn up strong evidence that the Basque separatist group ETA was responsible for the explosions in four trains, that would favour the conservative Popular Party (PP), which in eight years of government has cracked down on and severely weakened the terrorist organisation.

But if the signs point to involvement by the fundamentalist Islamic terror network al-Qaeda, the PP would be hurt, because the blasts would be seen as a consequence of the government of José María Aznar’s unconditional support for the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was overwhelmingly opposed by the public in Spain.

The question of who carried out the attacks is key, because although the polls indicate that the PP will take the greatest number of votes, it may or may not win an absolute majority in Congress, which appoints the prime minister.

Spain’s parties called off their campaigns immediately after the bombings, and political leaders are only indirectly referring to the elections.

Meanwhile, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and other opposition forces have called on the government to make public all of the information at its disposal, which they suspect it is not doing.

Reliable police sources told IPS that the evidence pointed to ETA, and that new developments in that sense might be announced Saturday.

But equally credible judicial sources say the elements pointing to al-Qaeda are more preponderant, and that the government would reveal them on Monday, after the polls were closed.

Arguments in favour of either hypothesis abound, and are the subject of intense debate as Spain slowly recovers from Thursday’s shock and gets ready for the elections, which will be held on schedule.

One element is an e-mail received and published by the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. In the message, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, an Islamic group affiliated with al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Sheikh Omar Bakri, a radical British Muslim cleric suspected of ties to al-Qaeda, which is headed by Saudi national Osama bin Laden, said in London that the e-mail was authentic and told the press the attacks in Madrid were ”a message…on behalf of al-Qaeda to the whole world.”

Bakri said the bombings came in retaliation for the Spanish government’s participation in the war on Iraq.

But Taysir Alouni, a reporter with the Al-Jazeera Arabic-language news network, told the Madrid newspaper El Mundo that the e-mail message published by Al-Quds Al-Arabi does not contain ”the actual words, or the formal terms, of a claim of responsibility for the attacks…It is merely a congratulations for what occurred, nothing more.”

Alouni interviewed bin Laden in Afghanistan after the Sep. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington, and is accused by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón of collaborating with al-Qaeda.

Above and beyond the question of the authenticity of the e-mail, police in Spain are investigating clues pointing to an al-Qaeda link, which began to emerge Thursday morning with the discovery of a stolen van containing detonators and an audiotape of Koranic verses.

The van was found in the city of Alcalá de Henares, on the outskirts of Madrid, where several of the trains originated Thursday.

In that city, where the terrorists apparently boarded the trains, homes were searched and witness testimony was collected. One of the witnesses, who reported the van to the police, said he saw three young men in the vehicle, one of whom carried a backpack as he got on one of the trains that exploded when it reached Madrid.

The police are also studying tapes shot by surveillance cameras in the Alcalá terminus and other stations.

Another piece of evidence was provided by a taxi driver who told the police that on Thursday, he picked up three young Arab-looking men at the Santa Engracia station – where one of the bomb blasts occurred – and took them to Madrid, where they got into a parked car and drove away.

Investigators are studying the clothing, detonators and other items found in the van in Alcalá for fingerprints and other clues. The same work is being carried out with the remains of the backpacks that held the bombs.

The hypothesis that ETA mounted the attack is based on information that police obtained in mid-2003 indicating that the group, which has been fighting for an independent Basque homeland for nearly four decades, was planning a large-scale attack in Madrid.

That information was confirmed when alleged ETA operatives placed two bags containing 25 kgs of dynamite each on a train heading to the northern city of Irún from the Chamartín station in Madrid on Dec. 24, 2003.

Minutes before the train left the station, the police arrested the two terrorists who left the explosives on the train, and deactivated the bombs.

And on Feb. 29, the police intercepted two vans carrying 500 kgs of explosives on the outskirts of Cuenca, 160 kms south of Madrid, and arrested the two young drivers, who confessed that they belonged to ETA. The explosives were reportedly destined for use in attacks planned in the capital.

In the 100th edition of ETA’s internal bulletin, Zutabe, the group included on its list of targets ”state-run means of transport and communication, railways and trains, freeways, bridges and airports.”

However, Arnaldo Otegi, the spokesman for Batasuna, ETA’s outlawed political arm, said Thursday that the group had nothing to do with the attacks in Madrid.

And on Friday, the Basque public TV station, EiTB, received a phone call from a mand who claimed to be speaking in the name of ETA, and said the group ”was not responsible for yesterday’s attacks.”

An EiTB official told IPS that on the caller’s request, the TV station compared his voice to that of one of the two hooded men who announced in a video on Feb. 18 that ETA had declared a truce in the northeastern province of Catalonia, and found it was the same voice.

The spokeswoman for the Basque provincial government, Miren Azkárate, told a news briefing Saturday that the phone call was credible because ”ETA kills but it doesn’t lie.” She also said ”the public has the sensation that all of the evidence that has been emerging points in the direction of Islamic terrorism.”

Nevertheless, Carlos Martínez Gorriarán, a philosophy professor at the Basque Country University, said he has no doubt that the attacks were the work of ETA.

In a lengthy analysis in the Madrid daily ABC, he purported to show that the attacks did not require a huge organisational apparatus. Because, he explained, ”leaving a few backpacks full of explosives on a train and exiting quietly is much more simple than approaching someone who is on alert and protected by bodyguards and shooting him in the head.”

A third possibility was raised Saturday by José Antich, the director of the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia, who suggested that the attacks might have been planned by al-Qaeda and carried out with support from ETA.

If neither hypothesis is proven to be correct before Sunday, many Spaniards will use their ballots to show who they believe.