Мадрид пойыздарына жасалған теракт (Madrid poýzdarına jasałğan terakt)

Terrorist attack on Madrid's suburban trains

The 2004 Madrid train bombings (also known in Spain as 11M) were a series of coordinated, nearly simultaneous bombings against the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, on the morning of 11 March 2004—three days before Spain's general elections. The explosions killed 193 people and injured around 2,050. The bombings constituted the deadliest terrorist attack carried out in the history of Spain and the deadliest in Europe since 1988. The attacks were carried out by individuals who opposed Spanish involvement in the 2003 US led invasion of Iraq. Controversy regarding the handling and representation of the bombings by the government arose, with Spain's two main political parties—the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and the Partido Popular (PP)—accusing each other of concealing or distorting evidence for electoral reasons. The bombings occurred three days before general elections in which incumbent Prime Minister José María Aznar's PP was defeated. while the opposition claimed that the PP was trying to prevent the public from knowing it had been an Islamist attack, which would be interpreted as the direct result of Spain's involvement in Iraq, an unpopular war which the government had entered without the approval of the Spanish Parliament. The prevailing opinion of political analysts is that the Aznar administration lost the general elections as a result of the handling and representation of the terrorist attacks, rather than because of the bombings per se. Results published in The Review of Economics and Statistics by economist José García Montalvo seem to suggest that indeed the bombings had important electoral impact (turning the electoral outcome against the incumbent People's Party and handing government over to the Socialist Party, PSOE). After 21 months of investigation, judge Juan del Olmo tried Moroccan national Jamal Zougam, among several others, for his participation carrying out the attack. Although claims were made that attacks were linked to al Qaeda, investigations and probes conducted by Spanish officials did not find any links to al Qaeda.

In France, the Vigipirate plan was upgraded to orange level. In Italy, the government declared a state of high alert. In December 2004, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero claimed that the PP government erased all of the computer files related to the Madrid bombings, leaving only the documents on paper. On 25 March 2005, prosecutor Olga Sánchez asserted that the bombings happened 911 days (exactly 2 and a half years) after the 11 September attacks due to the "highly symbolic and qabbalistic charge for local Al Qaida groups" of choosing that day. Actually, because 2004 was a leap year, 912 days had elapsed between 11 September 2001 and 11 March 2004. On 27 May 2005, the Prüm Convention, implementing inter alia the principle of availability which began to be discussed after the Madrid bombings, was signed by Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, and Belgium. On 4 January 2007, El País reported that Algerian Ouhnane Daoud, who is considered to be the mastermind of the 11 M bombings, has been searching for ways to return to Spain to prepare further attacks, though this has not been confirmed. On 17 March 2008, Basel Ghalyoun, Mohamed Almallah Dabas, Abdelillah El Fadual El Akil and Raúl González Peña, having been found guilty by the Audiencia Nacional, were released after a Higher Court ruling. This court also verified the release of the Egyptian Rabei Osman al Sayed.

On 14 March 2004, Abu Dujana al Afghani, a purported spokesman for al Qaeda in Europe, appeared in a videotape claiming responsibility for the attacks. The Spanish judiciary stated that a loose group of Moroccan, Syrian, and Algerian Muslims and two Guardia Civil and Spanish police informants were suspected of having carried out the attacks. On 11 April 2006, Judge Juan del Olmo charged 29 suspects for their involvement in the train bombings. No evidence has been found of al Qaeda involvement, In August 2007, al Qaeda claimed to be "proud" about the Madrid 2004 bombings. The Independent reported that "Those who invented the new kind of rucksack bomb used in the attacks are said to have been taught in training camps in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, under instruction from members of Morocco's radical Islamist Combat Group." Scholar Rogelio Alonso said in 2007, "the investigation had uncovered a link between the Madrid suspects and the wider world of al Qaida". Scott Atran said "There isn't the slightest bit of evidence of any relationship with al Qaida. We've been looking at it closely for years and we've been briefed by everybody under the sun and nothing connects them." He provides a detailed timeline that lends credence to this view. According to the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, the Islamic extremists' alliance with ETA is highly dubious and "there is not anyway any terror case whatsoever to this day in which islamist internationalists collaborated with non muslims". Former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar said in 2011 that Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and current head of the Tripoli Military Council, was suspected of complicity in the bombings.

Immediate reactions to the attacks in Madrid were the several press conferences held by the Spanish prime minister José María Aznar involving ETA. The Spanish government maintained this theory for two days. Because the bombs were detonated three days before the general elections in Spain, the situation had many political interpretations. The United States also initially believed ETA was responsible, then questioning if Islamic extremists were responsible. Spain's third largest newspaper, ABC, immediately labelled the attacks as "ETA's bloodiest attack." Due to the government theory, statements issued shortly after the Madrid attacks, including from lehendakari Juan José Ibarretxe identified ETA as the prime suspect, but the group, which usually claims responsibility for its actions, denied any involvement. Later evidence strongly pointed to the involvement of extremist Islamist groups, with the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group named as a focus of investigations. Although ETA has a history of mounting bomb attacks in Madrid, the 11 March attacks exceeded any attack previously attempted by a European organisation. This led some experts to point out that the tactics used were more typical of militant Islamic extremist groups, perhaps with a certain link to al Qaeda, or maybe to a new generation of ETA activists using al Qaeda as a role model. Observers also noted that ETA customarily, but not always, issues warnings before its mass bombings and that there had been no warning for this attack. Europol director Jürgen Storbeck commented that the bombings "could have been ETA But we're dealing with an attack that doesn't correspond to the modus operandi they have adopted up to now". Political analysts believe ETA's guilt would have strengthened the PP's chances of being re elected, as this would have been regarded as the death throes of a terrorist organisation reduced to desperate measures by the strong anti terrorist policy of the Aznar government.

All of the devices are thought to have been hidden inside backpacks. The police investigated reports of three people in ski masks getting on and off the trains several times at Alcalá de Henares between 7:00 and 7:10. A Renault Kangoo van was found parked outside the station at Alcalá de Henares containing detonators, audio tapes with Qur'anic verses, and cell phones. The provincial chief of TEDAX (the bomb disposal experts of the Spanish police) declared on 12 July 2004 that damage in the trains could not be caused by dynamite, but by some type of military explosive, like C3 or C4. An unnamed source from the Aznar administration claimed that the explosive used in the attacks had been Titadine (used by ETA, and intercepted on its way to Madrid 11 days before). In March 2007, the TEDAX chief claimed that they knew that the unexploded explosive found in the Kangoo van was Goma 2 ECO the very day of the bombings. He also asserted that "it is impossible to know" the components of the explosives that went off in the trains – though he later asserted that it was dynamite. The Judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez replied "I cannot understand" to these assertions.

A radio report mentioned a plastic explosive called "Special C". However, the government said that the explosive found in an unexploded device, discovered among bags thought to be victims' lost luggage, was the Spanish made Goma 2 ECO. The unexploded device contained of explosive with of nails and screws packed around it as shrapnel. In the aftermath of the attacks, however, the chief coroner alleged that no shrapnel was found in any of the victims. Goma 2 ECO was never before used by al Qaeda, but the explosive and the modus operandi were described by The Independent as ETA trademarks, although the Daily Telegraph came to the opposite conclusion. Two bombs, one in Atocha and another in El Pozo stations, numbers 11 and 12, were detonated accidentally by the TEDAX. According to the provincial chief of the TEDAX, deactivated rucksacks contained some other type of explosive. The 13th bomb, which was transferred to a police station, contained dynamite, although it did not explode because it was missing two wires connecting the explosives to the detonator. That bomb used a mobile phone (Mitsubishi Trium) as a timer, requiring a SIM card to activate the alarm and thereby detonate. The analysis of the SIM card allowed the police to arrest an alleged perpetrator. On 13 March, when three Moroccans and two Pakistani Muslims were arrested for the attacks, it was confirmed that the attacks came from an Islamist group. Only one of the five persons (the Moroccan Jamal Zougam) detained that day was finally prosecuted.

On 3 April 2004, in Leganés, south Madrid, four terrorists died in an apparent suicide explosion, killing one Grupo Especial de Operaciones (GEO) (Spanish special police assault unit) police officer and wounding eleven policemen. According to witnesses and media, between five and eight suspects escaped that day. Security forces carried out a controlled explosion of a suspicious package found near the Atocha station and subsequently deactivated the two undetonated devices on the Téllez train. A third unexploded device was later brought from the station at El Pozo to a police station in Vallecas, and became a central piece of evidence for the investigation. It appears that the El Pozo bomb failed to detonate because a cell phone alarm used to trigger the bomb was set 12 hours late.

Sectors of the People's Party (PP), and certain media, such as El Mundo newspaper and the COPE radio station, continue to support theories relating the attack to a vast conspiracy to remove the governing party from power. Support for the conspiracy was also given by the Asociación de Víctimas del Terrorismo (AVT), Spain's largest association of victims of terrorism. These theories speculate that ETA and members of the security forces and national and foreign (Moroccan) secret services were involved in the bombings. Defenders of the claims that ETA participated in some form in the 11 March attacks have affirmed that there is circumstantial evidence linking the Islamic extremists with two ETA members who were detained while driving the outskirts of Madrid in a van containing 500 kg of explosives 11 days before the train bombings. The Madrid judge Coro Cillán continued to hear conspiracy theory cases, including one accusing government officials of ordering the scrapping of the bombed train cars in order to destroy evidence.

The public seemed convinced that the Madrid Bombings were a result of the Aznar government's alignment with the U. S. and its invasion of Iraq. The terrorists behind the 11 M attack were somewhat successful because of the election outcome. Before the attack, the incumbent Popular Party led the polls by 5 percent. It is believed that the Popular Party would have won the election if it had not been for the terrorist attack. The Socialist Party, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, ended up winning the election by 5%. The Socialist Party had called for the removal of Spanish troops from Iraq during its campaigning. Rodríguez Zapatero promised to remove Spanish troops by 30 June 2004, and the troops were withdrawn a month earlier than expected. Twenty eight percent of voters said that the bombings influenced their opinions and vote. An estimated 1 million voters switched their vote to the Socialist Party after the Madrid bombings. These voters who switched their votes were no longer willing to support the Popular Party's stance on war policy. The bombings also influenced 1,700,000 citizens to vote who did not plan on originally voting. On the other hand, the terrorist attacks discouraged 300,000 people from voting. Overall, there was a net 4 percent increase in voter turnout.

In the investigations carried out to find out what went wrong in the security services, many individual instances of negligence and miscoordination between different branches of the police were found. The group dealing with Islamist extremists was very small and in spite of having carried out some surveillances, they were unable to stop the bombings. Also, some of the criminals involved in the "Little Mafia" who provided the explosives were police informants and had leaked to their case officers some tips that were not followed up on. Some of the alleged perpetrators of the bombing were reportedly under surveillance by the Spanish police since 2001. At the time of the Madrid bombings, Spain was well equipped with internal security structures that were, for the most part, effective in the fight against terrorism. It became evident that there were coordination issues between police forces as well as within each of them. The Interior Ministry focused on correcting these weaknesses. It was Spain's goal to strengthen its police intelligence in order to deal with the risks and threats of international terrorism. This decision for the National Police and the Guardia Civil to strengthen their counter terrorism services, led to an increase in jobs aimed at preventing and fighting global terrorism. Counter terrorism services increased its employment by nearly 35% during the legislature. Human resources in external information services, dealing with international terrorism, grew by 72% in the National Police force and 22% in the Guardia Civil.

The authorship of the bombings remains a controversial issue in Spain. Sectors of the Partido Popular (PP) and some of the PP friendly media outlets (primarily El Mundo and the Libertad Digital radio station) claim that there are inconsistencies and contradictions in the Spanish judicial investigation. As Spanish and international investigations continue to claim the unlikeliness of ETA's active implication, these claims have shifted from direct accusations involving the Basque separatist organisation to less specific insinuations and general scepticism. Additionally, there is controversy over the events that took place between the bombings and the general elections held three days later.

In the aftermath of the bombings, there were massive street demonstrations across Spain to protest against the train bombings. Two people died in political violence about the ETA controversy. The international reaction was also notable, as the scale of the attack became clearer.

A memorial service for the victims of this incident was held on 25 March 2004 at the Almudena Cathedral. It was attended by King Juan Carlos I, Queen Sofía, the victims' families, and representatives from numerous other countries, including British prime minister Tony Blair, French president Jacques Chirac, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and U. S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.