Spain probes Morocco link

2004-03-16 16:50

Madrid - Police believe six Moroccans were behind last week's Madrid train bombings, a Spanish newspaper said on Tuesday, as the country prepared to bury more victims and the outgoing prime minister was accused of trying to orchestrate a cover-up.

Centre-left El Pais said police had "identified six Moroccan citizens as the presumed perpetrators of the March 11 attacks".

The daily's web site said investigators were treating as authentic a videotape claiming al-Qaeda was responsible for the train bombings, which killed 201 people and injured more than 1 500.

It named one of the presumed bombers as Jamal Zougam, arrested at the weekend with four other suspects who had been seen by two of the train passengers shortly before the blasts. It did not identify the five other presumed attackers, who are still at large.

Police discovered a video at the weekend that claimed that the 10 bombs had been placed on packed Madrid commuter trains by al-Qaeda.

On the tape, a man speaking Arabic with a Moroccan accent said the attacks were revenge for the Spanish government's support for the US-led war on Iraq.

He said the bombs had been timed to explode exactly two and a half years after the September 11 attacks in the United States and threatened more attacks against US allies.

El Pais quoted unnamed anti-terrorist officials as saying Jordanian Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi could be the mastermind of the attacks. Zarqawi, accused by the United States of bomb attacks in Iraq, is suspected of having links with al-Qaeda.

At midday on Tuesday the authorities in the northern Basque region said they had handed over to investigators an Algerian who had made threats in January to attack Spaniards and had mentioned one of the train stations where the blasts occurred.

Funerals for more of the bomb victims were due to be held on Tuesday, along with a memorial service at Madrid cathedral at 21:00 and a protest at 20:00 at the suburban stations from which the four doomed trains departed.

The political fallout of the bombings - Spain's worst terrorist atrocity - continued on Tuesday.

Analysts said the attacks and the handling of the aftermath were instrumental in the weekend election defeat of the right-wing Popular Party (PP), which took Spain into the Iraq war despite fierce public opposition.

The PP blamed the bombs on the armed Basque separatist group ETA, despite evidence to the contrary, which triggered accusations that it was covering up an al-Qaeda link for electoral ends.

On Tuesday, the director of centre-left paper El Periodico said outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had personally telephoned "various media bosses in Madrid and Barcelona" on the day of the attacks to insist ETA was to blame.

Antonio Franco said there had been evidence of a possible al-Qaeda link when Aznar rang him - twice - but he had believed "that the prime minister was incapable ... of giving me guarantees about something he wasn't sure about".

- AFP