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| Europe |
| Terror's Spanish Legacy |
| 2007-03-12 |
| Three years after 3/11, the nation remains divided. Shrouded in white canvas, the memorial commemorating the March 11 terrorists attacks will be unveiled outside Atocha rail station here tomorrow, the third anniversary. Though the exact design is secret, the high glass structure is said to reflect light at different angles in tasteful tribute to the 191 lives extinguished that day. It will be out of place in Spain. The aftermath of 11M--once eme, as that day is known in Spanish--has been anything but tasteful. If America unified following 9/11, Spain split along sharply sectarian lines within hours of the commuter-train bombings. An election swung from the ruling and favored center-right Popular Party, whose support for the Iraq war the left quickly blamed for inviting terror, lost to the anti-American Socialists. The Islamist architects couldn't have hoped for a better result in striking three days before polling day. But those traumatic events have been followed by others, shifting the course of Spanish history in ways no one then imagined possible. The emotional legacy of 11M could be better appreciated a day before today's sober ceremony. An angry million or more were expected to march yesterday in Madrid against the sitting government's soft stance toward domestic terrorism. A fortnight ago, Prime Minister José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero let a Basque ETA terrorist serve out his reduced sentenced at home. José Ingnacio De Juana Chaos, convicted in the murder of 25 innocent people, had been on hunger strike. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #1 I would like that uninformed Americans didn't write articles about Spain. El Pais is not merely socialist leaning. It is more like Pravda in times of Stalin. For instance they photoshopped pictures of Saturday demonstartion in order to change the Constitutional Flags into the old flag used in time of Franco. For instance when he tells that the parliamentary investigation turned into afarce because both sides had traded accusations instead of doing the work. The fact is that it was socialist counterfires against popular party pointing at glaring holes in the official version. Analysis of explosives never done in the trains. Clues popping up inexpectedly of thin air into a zone who had been already researched. Two examples: teh Skoda mini-van where the islamic tapes were found along with detonators (first clue pointing to islamist authorship) had already been searched by a sniffer dog and hois trainer who found nothing) Then the phone whose chip led to the first arrests. According to the official version police collected debris and clues in the Alcala de Henares railway station. One of the objects was a backpack weighing thirty pounds. That is not an usaul object into a commuter train. Most commuters carry far smaller wallets. Only the a few people who are going to catch a plane or a long range train would carry something like that. Because it was unusual you would think the policeman who collected it would remind it. Nope. Also you would think he would be quite nervous about possible booby traps and would triple check with the explosives experts that it had been inspected. Nope again. So the bag goes to Alcala police station (agsint judge's orders to move everything to IFEMA) then to IFEMA then back to Alcala to a different police station, remains unsupervised for a time and suddenly aomeone discovers there is bomb in the bag and a cellphone for setting it up except that the wires were disconnected. That is the official version about the bag who led investigators to the arrests who turned the result of the elections. Can you say suspicious? |
| Posted by: JFM 2007-03-12 09:53 |