For one, it was another eleventh day of the month, similar to September 11. Even bigger, is that ETA in recent times, has not been particularly violent. They've destroyed a lot of property, but they often send a message to officials or the police that they've set a bomb--so that the building or other property can be evacuated.
Although there was one incident recently in which at least two people died, it was because those two had not gotten notice of the bombs, because they were in their vehicles. The rest of the building evacuated.
There wasn't such a warning for that Madrid train bombings on March 11.
-Simultaneous attacks in multiple locations,
-Intent to create maximum death, injury, and panic by attacking the public transportation system during weekday rush hours, and
-The indiscriminate nature of the attack.
These, along with the points you made, point to al Qaeda, not an ETA, as the attackers.
However, for the sake of argument, let us give the article prima fascia credibility. If two different types of explosives were present, what is really being alleged?
That an unidentified group used ETA explosives to attack the trains but left behind backpacks filled with GOMA-2 ECO explosives (along with jihadi CDs and other literature).
For what purpose?
Well, the obvious one is to have the unexploded backpacks provide "evidence" to cast the blame on Islamofascist terrorists, groups known to use the GOMA-2 ECO explosive.
But isn't that a particularly clumsy operational approach for the conspirators? (Conspirators which, J Aguilar in a subsequent posting to this thread, appear to be the PSOE, PP Spanish political parties and ETA Basque terrorist group) After all, the amount of explosives involved in the attacks was not particularly large. If you can obtain enough GOMA-2 ECO explosive to fill two back packs, you can obtain enough to fill them all.
Why introduce the second explosive, one associated with ETA? Was ETA compelled to use the other due to a shortage? Is the ETA so logistically incompetent that it would commit to executing this conspiracy and then not be able to obtain enough GOMA-2 ECO explosive to fill all the backpacks? Is it being alleged that Spanish police forensics is so incompetent that it wouldn't look at explosives residue on trains until 3 years after the fact?
Perhaps.
But it is also just as likely that the "smoking gun" pointing at ETA (in this case, the uncontaminated fire extinguisher) is the fake piece of evidence. Consider its provenance. It languishes ignored and untested until the eve of the trial and then suddenly it is "discovered" to have traces of the ETA explosives on it. It could have easily been removed, contaminated, replaced, then "discovered" and tested.
Who benefits from this new "evidence?"
ESOE? No.
PP? No.
ETA? No.
The Guardia Nacional? No.
Only poor, mistreated, and now, if we accept the evidence, the apparently falsely accused Islamic terror suspects now benefit.
No, that dog doesn't hunt. There are simply too many elements of the 3/11 attack that fit the classic al Qaeda attack pattern and don't fit ETA's current operational profile - including the use of explosives.
To allege that ESOE and PP would deliberately sponsor the killing of nearly 200 persons and the maiming of hundreds more to win the 2004 general election is breathtaking. And it is hard to imagine someone having knowledge of such a conspiracy not coming forward out of a sense of conscious during the following three years.
Now a possible variation on this conspiracy theory might be that ESOE and PP only wanted ETA to do property damage and that actual operatives exceeded their orders. But that theory doesn't work either because of the multiple, simultaneous, and maximum casualty nature of the attacks. These attacks were carefully planned and prepared from the beginning by a group that knew exactly what the effects were going to be. It is unlikely that operatives of an organization committed (at least at present) to NOT producing casualties would suddenly become confused over what was intended.
Or are the conspiracy's paths now considered to be ESOE/PP to ETA to al Qaeda; with the sponsors knowing that the executing party would go for maximum blood? If so, that's a conspiracy of utter evil.
An easier argument to make - if you still want to consider the explosives evidence as valid - is that the local Islamofacist terrorist operatives established connections somehow with the ETA and obtained explosives from them to fill a gap in their supplies. Use of ETA explosives as an attempt to throw suspicion off of themselves is unlikely since al Qaeda wanted to (and subsequently did) take credit for the attack as punishment to Spain for supporting the GWOT and as a warning to Europe to elect governments more sympathetic to Islamic causes. Something Spain subsequently did.
An ETA delegation has visited Tehran every year since 1985 to participate in an annual gathering of "anti-Imperialist" movements that is held annually from Feb. 1 to Feb. 11. (The Tehran terror-fest, known as "The Ten Days of Dawn," celebrates the victory of the 1979 Islamist Revolution). Indeed, the list of ETA and Islamist-terrorist links is long and well-documented:
• In 1986, the French police identified one Vahid Gorji, an attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Paris, as the mullahs' liaison officer with European terror groups, including ETA. (Gorji was subsequently allowed to fly home under escort as Iran and France severed diplomatic ties.)
• In 1993, ETA -- along with a dozen other Western terrorist organizations -- had observers in the largest ever gathering of Islamist groups held in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. The conference elected a nine-member "steering committee" that included Osama bin Laden.
• In 1998, Spanish police arrested another Iranian agent, Rahman Dezfouli, on charges of contacts with ETA. He, too, was subsequently expelled because he was the holder of an Iranian "service passport."
ETA's literature, as disseminated over the past three decades, is replete with expressions of sympathy for various Islamist causes including "wiping Israel off the map" and "driving the American Imperialists out of the world." In exchange, al Qaeda literature has paid tribute to ETA's "heroic struggle" for Basque independence. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al Qaeda second-in-command, has spoken of his dream of "liberating Andalusia," the part of Spain once ruled by Muslims, presumably letting ETA rule its own neck of the wood in the Basque country.