Intelligence reports examined Tuesday by lawmakers investigating Madrid's train bombings indicated that police found evidence pointing to Islamic militants hours earlier than they had announced, members of the panel said. The closed-door session marked the start of the second week of Parliament's inquiry into the March 11 attack that killed 190 people and injured more than 2,000. The 16 members of the panel spent hours examining 20 classified documents from the National Intelligence Center, Spain's version of the CIA, dealing with a threat by Osama bin Laden in October 2003 to attack Spain and with the first stages of the March 11 probe. Later, they were to examine documents from the Interior Ministry.
Some documents from the intelligence center offer new information on the first big break in the case - a van containing detonators, traces of dynamite and a cassette tape with Quranic verses, and found near the rail station where the four bombed trains originated or passed through, said Emilio Olabarria, a panel member representing the Basque Nationalist Party. Police testified last week that the evidence in the van was not found until the afternoon of the attack. At that point, the then-conservative government - which had backed the Iraq war and feared an Islamic link would hurt it in general elections due in three days' time - had already blamed Basque separatists for the attack. It went on to lose the election to the Socialists. But Olabarria, without going into detail on the documents he read, suggested the evidence was found right away in a preliminary search of the van within hours of the attacks. "We have seen things that are surprising," he told reporters. The inquiry aims to clarify how the attacks were organized as well as to blame study the then government's handling of the crisis in the run-up to the elections. Lawmakers said some of the documents contained paragraphs that had been blotted out. Olabarria and others played down the deletions as insignificant, saying they apparently referred to intelligence sources. But others complained it made no sense for the new Socialist government to make documents available in a secret session, with no photocopying allowed, and then hold back information.
| To me that means there's something there that the Socialist government doesn't want them to see, like maybe al-Qaeda plans to return Spain to Islamic rule. |
Last week's testimony featured senior police officials closely involved in the March 11 probe who cast doubt on the government's initial insistence that ETA was the prime suspect even after the evidence of an Islamic link emerged. The government of then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had sent 1,300 troops to Iraq, despite widespread opposition to the war, and allegedly feared that word of Islamic involvement would doom it in the March 14 elections. Voters ousted the Popular Party and elected the Socialists who opposed the war and quickly brought the troops home. |