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 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.

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.

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.

Source: http://www.elmundo.es

Translated by

http://www.worldlingo.com/

MADRID.- The minister of the Interior, Acebes Angel, has announced the halting of three Moroccans and two Hindus by his presumed entailment with the attacks in the capital. The arrested ones they would be related to the phonecard prepayment found in the knapsack pump that the police deactivated next to the police station of Vallecas.

Acebes explained that the last finding of the security forces was the one of a stock market of sports that it contained an explosive of Plastic explosive of the mark ECHO made in Spain, reinforced with shrapnel to multiply its effect, along with a detonator and a movable telephone. The detonator was just as found Thursdays in a van in Alcala de Henares and were made in copper and not in aluminum, that are those that usually uses ETA.

In his appearance of Thursday, the minister of the Interior related the attack to the attempts of ETA to cause a massacre in Nochevieja of 2002, and Christmas Eve of 2003 in Chamartín and the Valley of Arán.

The experts in the antiterrorist fight also are looking for DNA tests in gloves, a jersey and a t-shirt that were inside the van of Alcala de Henares. In addition they are studying tens of gathered digital tracks in the vehicle.
The found movable telephone in the knapsack of Vallecas, card prepayment and the Trium mark, was programmed so that its alarm sounded to one hour certain and to activate therefore the explosive. In addition, according to the chain informs To be, the configuration of the options of the apparatus was in Spanish.

As far as the explosives, to the Civil Guard it does not consist no robbery months in the last to him. The Plastic explosive is dedicated to public works and mining and makes in Spain, but also in several paises European, mainly in Germany, Czech Republic and Poland. In our country, the producer is Spanish Union of Riotinto Explosives, that has registered no robbery neither in factory, nor in deposits, nor in transport, although there are other companies that concern it of the outside and they sell it here. Sources of the antiterrorist fight have needed that it is very dificil that somebody can remove a as important amount of explosives as the used one by the terrorists in Madrid.

With respect to the tape in Arab with versicles of the Corán found in the van located in Alcala de Henares, in which also were identical timers to which there were in stock-market of sports, the minister assured that "there are no new data".

30 years of terrorism

Friday, before the appearance of Acebes, the president of the government Jose Mª Aznar pronounced itself in the same line that the minister of Interior. "the religious fanaticism only marks differences in its alibis, but all the terrorists obey to the same killer impulse". In his appearance after his last Cabinet like president of the Government, Jose Maria Aznar has wanted to leave very clear that the Executive does not discard "any line of investigation" - ETA or Islamic terrorists of A the Qaeda- on whom is after the attacks.

Nevertheless, an Executive "with two fingers front in Spain has wondered itself if, after 30 years of terrorism, before an attack as the one of yesterday does not have to think logically, reasonably, that he has to be that band the author".

"What tried that terrorist organization when it wanted to enter the week last Madrid 500 kilos of explosives?", the president has said, who has also remembered the examples exposed by Acebes.

Aznar has refused to pronounce itself on if the route of investigation of ETA has greater force than the one than it aims at the Islamic terrorism, because it is not going "to play quinielas". The same Acebes has done, that has insisted on which "ETA continues being the main line of investigation".

The Government is not going to work "on hypothesis", but on "safe information", the president has declared, who thinks that "the minister of the Interior did what had to do" Thursday, when talked about at a first moment the ETA responsibility.

Doubts on the responsibility

The doubts on the responsibility arose same Thursday. In principle, the minister of the Interior, Acebes Angel assured butcher who "did not fit any doubt to him" that ETA was behind the massacre.

Hours later, the own minister of Interior returned to appear in press conference to announce the finding in Alcala de Henares of a van that had been robbed in Madrid the 28 of February and in that were eight detonators and one tape with versicles of the Corán. The hypothesis of A the Qaeda took force.

Later, in a supposed letter of A the Qaeda sent to a published Arab newspaper in London, the Brigades of Abu Hafs To the Masri vindicated their responsibility of the attack. The organization attributed the massacre to a "adjustment of old accounts" with Spain.

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