Posted on 03/13/2004 11:06:46 AM PST by thoughtomator
Edited on 03/13/2004 12:17:47 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Admin Moderator update:
Spain Announces Five Arrests in Bombings
MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spain's interior minister Saturday announced the arrest of five suspects in the Madrid bombings, including three Moroccans.
The other two suspects had Indian passports, a ministry spokesman said.
The five were arrested in connection with a cell phone inside an explosives-packed gym bag found on one of the bombed commuter trains.
The suspects ``could be related to Moroccan extremist groups,'' the minister said. ``But we should not rule out anything. Police are still investigating all avenues. This opens an important avenue.''
The 10 bombings on Thursday, which killed 200 people on Madrid commuter trains, amounted to the worst terror attack in Spanish history.
Families began burying their dead Saturday as a cold drizzle fell on Madrid on the eve of parliamentary elections.
In a show of national unity, massive crowds gathered in Barcelona, Seville, Valencia and even in Spain's Canary Islands off western Africa on Friday night to protest the attack. State TV said nationwide, more than 11 million marched - one-quarter of Spain's 42 million people.
In Madrid, black bows of mourning dotted the city, on shop windows, on flags draped from balconies, and on lapels.
Madrid's biggest funeral home, Tanatorio Sur, was so overcrowded that some coffins were placed in a room normally used for staff meetings. Outside, hearses carried coffins in and out all morning.
Investigators were focusing on a stolen white van found in the town of Alcala de Henares outside Madrid hours after the blasts. Police found detonators and an Arabic-language cassette tape with Quranic verses inside. Alcala de Henares is the town where three of the four bombed trains originated.
A doorman told police he saw three young men carrying knapsacks toward the station in Alcala de Henares, a senior police official said Saturday on condition of anonymity. Officials have said the bombs used in the train attacks were concealed in knapsacks.
The doorman saw the men get out of the van and ``walk toward the train carrying backpacks and he was struck by the fact that they were wearing ski masks when the weather was not suited for that kind of clothing,'' the official said.
``It is one of the main focuses of the investigation,'' the official said. ``It is very important.''
A London-based Arabic newspaper also received a claim of responsibility in al-Qaida's name that called the attack ``part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam.''
The attack's lethal coordination and timing - 10 explosions within 15 minutes - suggested al-Qaida. But the compressed dynamite used in the backpack bombs is an explosive favored by the Basque separatist group ETA.
ETA issued an apparently unprecedented denial Friday, saying it had nothing to do with the bombings. It has claimed responsibility for more than 800 deaths since 1968 in its fight for an independent state in the northern Basque region.
Debate on who is behind the attacks could sway voters in Sunday's election.
If ETA is deemed responsible, that could boost support for Mariano Rajoy, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's hand-picked candidate to succeed him as prime minister. Both have supported a crackdown on ETA, ruling out talks and backing a ban on ETA's political wing, Batasuna.
However, if Thursday's bombings are seen by voters as the work of al-Qaida, that could draw their attention to Aznar's vastly unpopular decision to endorse the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and deploy Spanish troops there.
Opinion polls have put Rajoy 3-5 percentage points ahead of Socialist candidate Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. No surveys have been released since the attacks.
Aznar, in power since 1996, is honoring a pledge not to seek a third term, saying he wants renewal in government and his party.
Spanish radio station Cadena Ser broadcast a 12-second recording of an unidentified woman who had called a colleague's voice mail after an initial blast on a train at the Atocha station.
The woman, who survived, was in the process of fleeing as she frantically says: ``I'm in Atocha. There's a bomb on the train! We had to -'' and then two more blasts are heard.
Spain arrests 3 Moroccans, 2 Indians in bomb probe
MADRID, March 13 (Reuters) - Spain's Interior Minister Angel Acebes said on Saturday that three Moroccans and two Indians had been arrested in Madrid as part of the investigation into train bombings that killed 200 people three days ago.
Also, two Spaniards of Indian origin were giving statements to police, Acebes said at a news conference.
Spain Announces Five Arrests in Bombings
"1000 Years for Revenge" by Peter Lance; "Why America Slept" by Gerald Posner; and "Losing Bin Laden" by Richard Minitier. I'm sure you've heard of a couple of these, maybe all---but the key is that all three CLEARLY show that bin Laden was into terrorism LONG BEFORE the Gulf War. He had already made up his mind that America was the great satan, and he had nothing to do with Iraq until the mid-1990s.
Moreover, the timeline of these makes it pretty clear that Iraq's participation in the first WTC bombing was minimal (although it as tangentially involved).
That's what I think too. I think it's a political movement cloaking itself in religion. Easier to manipulate people.
Read through the rest of my posts on this thread. What's "intriguing" about it is that religion may have nothing to do with it. If religion has nothing to do with it, then this is basically a political war.
Which would also mean that anyone who has ever criticized President Bush for failing to identify Islam as the "enemy" in this war ought to stand up right now and offer the President a sincere, humble apology.
Spain has been part of an ongoing WOT that has removed about 70% of Al Qaeda from the globe.
Now, do you really think that the Spanish voters are going to say, "OK, lets choose socialists would want to appease the remaining 30% of these terrorists who have just murdered our fellow countrymen", or do you think the Spanish voters will say, "OK, lets keep the pols we have now and let's finish the job".
I think it's the latter. Si?
Think of just 10 suicide teams of 2 members each, with nothing but hand grenades and ak-47's. Not that very hard to procure. At 3PM EST, they all enter the food courts of the 10 most crowded malls in america, where they procede to toss 3 hand grenades each, and mop up the rest with the ak 47's. It would be a freaking blood bath. It just takes the will, and operational secrecy. In fact there is just about nothing to prevent two lone nut muslims from doing this at a busy location, other than fear of losing their life.
That is the only thing that keeps the wolf at bay. The technology, feasability in a country with as lax security (relatively speaking) as ours is easy enough for an amateur to pull it off, as long as they are willing to say hello to the virgins.
Al Qaeda is outsourcing.
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