Madrid: Islamic radicals blamed

2004-12-13 11:41

Madrid - Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Monday that "international terrorism of the Islamic radical type" was solely to blame for the attacks which killed 191 people in Madrid on March 11 this year.

"The control, preparation and responsibility for the March 11 attacks is exclusively linked to international terrorism of the Islamic radical type," he told the parliamentary commission investigating the blasts on commuter trains, which also left 1 900 people injured.

Zapatero said he was basing his statement on the work of the judiciary, the police, the prison authorities and the intelligence services in investigating the attacks.

"It is the factual truth, not an opinion," said Zapatero, who is the first head of government in Spain's history to appear before a parliamentary investigating panel.

Two weeks ago Zapatero's predecessor Jose Maria Aznar, in testimony to the same commission, suggested that Basque separatist group ETA had a hand in the attacks, possibly in collaboration with Islamists.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the insistence of Aznar's government that ETA was to blame for them was seen as contributing to its ouster by Zapatero's socialists in elections that were held only days afterwards.

Zapatero said on Monday that the "planning and execution" of the March 11 attacks were carried out by the "same" people who carried out the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States and explosions at a Bali nightclub in October 2002, and in Casablanca, Morocco, in October last year and in Istanbul, Turkey a month later.

All those attacks have been blamed on groups linked to to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Meanwhile, the daily El Pais reported on Monday that Aznar's government had wiped official computers before leaving office, destroying in particular documents relating to March 11.

The action deprived Zapatero of the possibility of giving the parliamentary probe any detailed information on the activities of the previous administration, the paper said.

- AFP