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Bombing: 'My blood ran cold'
06/07/2004 10:40 - (SA)
Madrid, Spain - Parliament's investigation into the Madrid train bombings opened on Tuesday with a witness account of three young men wearing wool caps on a warm spring day, and with handkerchiefs covering their faces, at the station where the attacks started.
Carrying a bag, one walked quickly toward a train, while the other two stayed behind at a parked van. "My blood ran cold. I thought it was a robbery," Luis Garrudo, a doorman in the town of Alcala de Henares, said.
Garrudo told the commission what he told authorities on March 11: He directed police to the suspicious van that was found to contain a cassette tape with verses from the Quran, detonators and traces of explosives of the kind used in the attack. It was the first big break in the case.
In all, 10 backpacks stuffed with dynamite and shrapnel exploded on four crowded trains heading to Madrid during the morning rush hour, killing 190 passengers and bystanders, and wounding more than 2 000.
Of 50 people arrested, 16 remain in jail, including two who are believed to have put the explosives on the trains.
Garrudo, his face electronically scrambled for security reasons on the live cable TV broadcast of the hearing, was the first of at least 35 people scheduled to testify before the 16-member commission of the Congress of Deputies.
The commission will interview witnesses and officials, and examine police documents and other material, to review what happened on March 11 and the following days.
Thirteen people, most of them police officials, were scheduled to appear before the panel this week. The investigation similar to the Sept. 11 commission in the United States is expected to last at least a month.
Testimony from key politicians was left for the final stage of the probe. It is not yet known if former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar will testify. He has not been subpoenaed. His Popular Party says he'll testify willingly if requested.
The probe is politically charged. Socialists seem bent on highlighting the previous government's initial insistence that Basque separatists - not Islamic militants - were the main suspects, in a bid influence the election.
- AP
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