Messy clues plague Madrid

2004-03-14 20:56

Madrid - Although an al-Qaeda connection in the Madrid rail bombings has become more and more apparent over the past couple of days, the government on Sunday was officially keeping an open mind on the blasts in which 200 people were killed.

If the atrocity was perpetrated by al-Qaeda rather than the separatist organisation Basque Land and Liberty (ETA), these are some of the clues that support a radical Islamist connection:

A video in which a man speaking "Arabic with a Moroccan accent" claimed al-Qaeda was responsible; the man said he was speaking in the name of Abu Dukhan al Afghani, al-Qaeda's military spokesperson in Europe.

The arrest in Madrid of three Moroccans and two Indians, who were traced through the cellphone placed as a detonator in one of the 13 bombs, which did not explode.

A communiqué said to have been issued by al-Qaeda and delivered to an Arab newspaper in London claiming responsibility for the attacks.

Threats of reprisals because of Spain's support for the US-led occupation of Iraq, include a warning attributed to Osama Bin Laden in October.

Discovery of an audio cassette with verses from the Qu'ran in a stolen van near the railroad station at Alcala de Henares, the starting point of the doomed trains. Police found seven detonators in the van, which may have been used to transport the bombs to the station.

The similarity of the explosives to those used by "a terrorist group linked to Islamism," according to anti-terrorist experts cited by the SER radio network.

Arguments for ETA

But there are still also compelling arguments for believing that the attacks were carried out by ETA, including the following:

The discovery on March 1 of a map of Alcala de Henares in the possession of two alleged ETA members whom the government accuses of planning a bomb attack.

The assumption that ETA had been planning for some time to carry out an attack in a major train station in Madrid. On December 24, police arrested two alleged ETA members whom they accused of planning to put two powerful bombs on an express train, timed to explode after its arrival at the Charmartin railway station, which would have been crowded with people going home for Christmas. Had two of the trains targeted on Thursday been running a couple of minutes earlier, the bombs would have exploded inside the Atocha station, Madrid's main terminus.

The capture earlier this month of more than half a ton of explosives in a van headed towards the capital, and believed to be intended for an attack on an industrial centre near Madrid.

Not typical

But if this was an attack by ETA, it was not a typical one for the following reasons:

Repeated denials of responsibility by ETA, including one in the pro-separatist newspaper Gara, and by ETA's political front, Batasuna. ETA has never before condemned a bombing carried out by its operatives.

Since the 1980s, ETA has not used the type of explosives believed to have been used in the blasts, Goma 2. Recently the organisation has used an industrial dynamite called Titadyn, of which it has reportedly stolen a large quantity in France. The detonators found in the stolen van abandoned in Alcala de Henares were made of copper, although of Spanish make. In the past ETA has used detonators made of a better conductor, aluminium, according to security sources cited in the Spanish press.

ETA has usually struck at police, army and government targets, and when it has attacked places frequented by large numbers of civilians, it has given a telephone warning shortly before an explosion, which the government said was not done before the train bombings. But the organisation had never shrunk from killing. Before Thursday's bombs attacks ETA had taken the lives of more than 800 Spaniards.

Although ETA has carried out some spectacular attacks in the past, including the 1973 assassination of Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco, which sent his automobile sailing clean over the roof of a church, some observers say the railway attacks were too complicated for an organisation the government has been claiming is on its last legs. Many of the organisation's operatives have been arrested in Spain and France, including the man reputed to be its top military commander.

But increasingly police are arresting ETA suspects who do not have criminal records, indicating an influx of fresh blood into the organisation.

Late last year, the European police agency Europol warned that ETA was planning "large scale operations that would have an important effect on public opinion and the international media."

It said "Madrid could be a possible target of an action using explosives and car bombs in strategic places in the capital," such as the metro, highways and shopping malls.

- AFP