Bombing: Madrid was warned

2004-03-26 15:36

Rabat - A Moroccan newspaper on Friday claimed that the terrorist massacre in Madrid of March 11 could have been avoided had Spanish intelligence services not ignored warnings from Morocco.

"If anti-terrorist co-operation on Madrid's part had been exemplary, (Jamal) Zougam and his accomplices would have been neutralised and the murderous attacks on trains probably avoided," said the daily Aujourd'hui le Maroc.

Moroccan security services had given their Spanish counterparts a list of 16 members of the al-Qaeda network living in Spain, in the wake of bomb attacks in the Moroccan city of Casablanca on May 16 last year which killed 45 people.

On March 11, ten bombs ripped through Madrid commuter trains killing some 200 people, in an attack initially blamed on Basque separatists but then pinned on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Suspects detained since the attacks in Spain include alleged al-Qaeda member Zougam, who left Morocco three weeks after the Casablanca suicide attacks.

Aujourd'hui Le Maroc (Morocco Today), an independent newspaper, claimed that Spain's outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was unwilling to co-operate with Moroccan intelligence because of frosty diplomatic ties.

"The terrorists were not even under surveillance," the paper said.

It charged that Aznar wanted the eyes of Spanish intelligence "turned more to spying on Morocco than co-operating with it. This was the start of the process that led to the failure of March 11."

"Because he was too aligned to the policies of George W Bush, ... Jose Maria Aznar, arrogant as ever, antagonised his European partners, irritated his southern neighbour (Morocco) and neglected the real threats hanging over his country," the paper said.

Apart from Zougam, Rabat had also tipped the Spanish off to the case of Karim Mejatti, a Moroccan sought by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation who suspected him of representing a potential threat to the United States, the paper said.

- SAPA