,
Lanzarote 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.
Allegations of ETA involvement 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.
Investigation 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.
Examination of unexploded devices 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.
Suicide of suspects where the four terrorists died 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.
Conspiracy theories 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.
Invasion of Iraq policy 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. 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.
Trial Judge
Juan del Olmo found "local cells of Islamic extremists inspired through the Internet" guilty for the 11 March attacks, According to
El Mundo, "the notes found on the Moroccan informer 'Cartagena' prove that the Police had the leaders of the cell responsible for the 11 March attacks under surveillance." However, none of the notes refer to the preparation of any terrorist attack. The trial of 29 defendants began on 15 February 2007. According to
El País, "the Court dismantled one by one all conspiracy theories" and demonstrated that any link with or involvement in the bombings by ETA was either misleading or groundless. During the trial the defendants retracted their previous statements and denied any involvement. According to
El Mundo the questions of "by whom, why, when and where the Madrid train attacks were planned" are still "unanswered", because the alleged masterminds of the attacks were acquitted.
El Mundo also claimed — among other misgivings — that the Spanish judiciary reached "scientifically unsound" conclusions about the kind of explosives used in the trains, and that no direct al-Qaeda link was found, thus "debunking the key argument of the official version". Anthropologist
Scott Atran described the Madrid trial as "a complete farce" stating that "There isn't the slightest bit of evidence of any operational relationship with al-Qaida". Instead, "The overwhelming majority of [terrorist cells] in Europe have nothing to do with al-Qaida other than a vague relationship of ideology." The last hearing of the trial was held on 2 July 2007. On 31 October 2007, the
Audiencia Nacional of Spain handed down its judgements. Of the 28 defendants in the trial, 21 were found guilty on a range of charges from forgery to murder. Two of the defendants were each sentenced to more than 40,000 years in prison.
Jamal Zougam (born 5 October 1973) is one of the men convicted for the bombings. He was detained on 13 March 2004, accused of multiple counts of murder, attempted murder, stealing a vehicle, belonging to a terrorist organisation and four counts of carrying out terrorist acts. Spain's
El País newspaper reported that three witnesses testified to seeing him leave a rucksack aboard one of the bombed trains, specifically, the one that exploded at Santa Eugenia station. Born in Morocco, Zougam owned a mobile phone shop in the Lavapiés neighborhood in Madrid called
Nuevo Siglo (
The New Century). He is believed to be the person who sold telephones which were used to detonate the bombs in the attack. He also reportedly helped construct the bombs and was one of the first to be arrested. On 31 October 2007, he was convicted of 191 charges of murder and 1,856 charges of attempted murder, and received a sentence of 42,922 years in confinement. ==Police surveillance and informants==