Posted on 07/21/2008 12:54:33 PM PDT by J Aguilar
Today another part of that building in ruins named "official version of 3/11" has collapsed:
Without Mastermind
The sentence of the Supreme Court endorses, for the three masterminds that the Office of the Public Prosecutor had accused, the acquittal regarding the charges that had been issued to them in that sense. Mohamed the Egyptian, who during a long time appeared as the top ideologist of the attack, is not even condemned for belonging to an armed band, since the Egyptian already is being judged for that charge in Italy. Hassan El Haski, another one of "masterminds" presented by the Office of the Public Prosecutor, is not only not sentenced as inductor of the massacre, but also the appeal court has reduced his prison term for the charge of belonging to an armed band.
Goodbye to the Islamist Cell
Two of the members of the so called "Virgen del Coro cell", the only group among the indicted which had some contact, as a group, to the radical Islamist world, has been straightforwardly acquitted. Concretely, it has been acquitted Basel Ghalyoun, about whom it was said that his DNA had appeared in Leganés, and Mouhannad Almallah Dabas, who at some time was presented as the mastermind (one of the so many successive “minds”) behind the massacre. Several others of the defendants of North western African origin sentenced for integration in an armed band, as Mohamed Larbi and Hassan El Haski, saw their conviction time reduced.
Not just that: the Supreme Court state in its sentence, textually, that who committed the Madrid attacks were "a group or terrorist organization different and independent" from Al Qaeda, even though "it would exist an ideological dependency with respect to the postulates defended" by that Islamist organization.
The Far Reaching Informers
Raúl González is also acquitted, although in exchange Antonio Toro, on whose character as informer of the Security Forces it has been speculated over and over, is condemned for traffic of explosives. A condition of informer he would share with other two of the indicted ones whose sentences have been confirmed by the Supreme Court: Emilio Suárez Trashorras and Rafá Zouhier.
Goodbye to the Cell of Leganés too.
The sentence confirms the acquittal of Abdelmahid Bouchar as perpetrator, which prevents to assign, from the logical point of view, the responsibility of the attack to the dead ones of Leganés. The Court states that exists sufficient indications on the relation of dead ones of Leganés with the massacre, but recognizes explicitly that it cannot be settled down “an individualized attribution of penal responsibility to each one of them, since this was extinguished with their death, which determined, consequently, that they were not judged and that [during the trial] there were not practiced proofs to charge or discharge them".
These doubts on the role of the dead ones of Leganés accentuate one of the major surprises of the sentence: the total acquittal of Abdelilah El Faudal, lieutenant and intimate friend of Jamal Ahmidan [the “cell leader” of the dead ones of Leganés, according to the official version]. Abdelilah El Fadual has been exonerated of any charge in relation to the massacre, thus, how was going Jamal Ahmidan to be one of the operative minds of the massacre and, nevertheless, to be completely alien to it his number two, Abdelilah El Fadual?
Without Perpetrators
3/11 remains, therefore, without perpetrators, albeit Jamal Zougham, for whom the sentence is maintained based on more than doubtful witness recognitions. In any case, still considering that sentence, 3/11 would remain without mastermind and with a single "bomb handler" for twelve explosive devices. That one would be the scandalous result of four years of police and judicial investigations.
Three Condemned for 3/11
As also it is scandalous the fact that, of the eighteen condemned, only three are so for their relation to 3/11. Only three of the 29 indicted in the first trial will have to compensate the victims of 3/11. The other 15 indicted are condemned by the Supreme Court for other reasons (traffic of explosives, documentary falsification, belonging to an armed band…), but not for its relation with the massacre.
To make things worse, none of the three condemned for 3/11 has an Islamist profile. One of them is the police informer Emilio Suárez Trashorras and the other two are two Moroccans without slightest proved link to radical Islam.
A little more than four years after 3/11, we continue, therefore, to ignore who conceived that attack, who organized it, who financed it and who executed it. The first judicial assault of 3/11 finishes, thus, in a great failure, by which the massacre of Madrid is condemned to the trunk of the unsolved historical mysteries, at the expense of journalistic investigations that might be able to bring some light to where the official instances have not known, have not been able or have not wanted to reach.
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The Taboo.
by José María Marco (link here)
The slaughters of 3/11 are the foundation of a change of regime, a historical turn in the Spanish life. They were preceded by the mobilizations against the Government of Aznar, caused by the scorn of the PSOE [Socialist party] towards democracy and by the scorn of the PP [right wing party] towards public opinion.
Between the 11th and 14th March, we understood the reach of these two attitudes. The PSOE and related media lay, manipulated and violated the democratic rules. The Government of the PP was stiff and without capacity of response as they saw how the plot of linking the slaughters of Madrid with the Spanish support to the War of Iraq was being built. Having [this support] not explained [to the Spanish public opinion], now there was no way to resist the propaganda, even the most vulgar.
Since then, the slaughters of 3/11 have been taboo for both parties. For the PSOE, because their arrival to the power and the coming of the new regime has been for always related to the crime from which it was its prelude and its inauguration. For the PP, because what was staged those four days it was the terror of the PP Government to see itself involved, via Iraq, in that barbarity.
Basically, it is the attitude of a significant number of Spaniards, that in a matter of hours decided to become lost in thought and to surrender to terror. For the same reason, 3/11 was closed, reduced to an episode or an accident. The PSOE could take advantage of that attitude with the only limit of the flagrant and every time bulkier size of the lies. But nothing was unsolvable for those who had made of the cynicism and the fanaticism the base of their attitude. The PP, however, had to move away, as far as possible, from the memory of the facts, to pass page, as it was said, under the threat to see itself punished by voters who have chosen, with total awareness on what they do, to know nothing about that subject.
As it usually happens with any taboo, it also entails a confession from those who accept it. Everybody has something to hide. As far as the PSOE, it is evident: just by what it is known about what they did during those days, it would already be enough to put their arrival to power at stake. As far as the PP, they themselves left the arguments that would have allowed them to build a consistent defence and a plausible response. And, with regard to the public opinion, at least the majority, hardly could now face the truth of what happened on 3/11 without questioning its own attitude before the consequences of those facts, consequences of which that same opinion is responsible.
So we are facing that in the new regime of Rodriguez Zapatero, this second Transition which we are attending since March 2004, is not only marked by crime. It is also marked, from its same foundations, by the impossibility of knowing what happened in 3/11. All the Spanish public life is since then mottled by crime and contaminated by silence. The spread certainty is that if what happened began to come into the light, the entire Spanish political system would collapse; since it seems so far the complicities on the facts and their consequences reach.
The sentence of the Supreme Court aims without remedy towards that blind point in which the truth cannot be told, having been left the lie uncovered. What can be founded on this? Little. The one who talks or wants to know will be blamed for the sins of all. So is how the taboo has already transformed our political system, up to the point of beginning to turn it into a fiction, the shade of a liberal democracy.
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More 3/11 here:
Search @ Freerep
An introduction to the case: Spain’s “Terrorgate”? by Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
More data on 3/11 in Spanish here:
Luis del Pino's blog
Kickjor's blog
The last Luis del Pino TV program on the case here @ LDTV
Still holding what remains of the official version, the “lone shooters”, remain the (against what an American TV news channel tells) Christian Trashorras, a light schizophrenic police informer –a man with natural characteristics for this role indeed- who will relatively soon be out of prison due to illness; and the Muslims, (although not Islamists), Otman El Ganoui and Jamal Zougham, this last the man whose arrest changed the result of the Spanish 2004 national elections.
Soon they will be said that it was all an accident.
Well, ten accidents.
Two assessments on the appeal sentece, the last also describing the situation of the Spanish society, now facing too the deepest economic crises since the post war.
There is complicity enough to share. The public who surrendered to terror at the first shot.
And Zapatero and his minions who manipulated a terrorist strike in order to leverage himself into power.
On March 10 Spaniards could hold their heads high. Only they can decide to return to March 10. But they’ll have to send Zapatero packing as step one in regaining their self-respect.
I don’t say this with any sense of superiority. We are on the edge of electing our own Zapatero into the presidency. We have only beat back our surrenderists by the barest of margins and it remains to be seen if we will manage it this time.
And so the Moorish re-Reconquista of Spain ends, first with a bang, and finally with a whimper.
Today, another section of the bombed-out shell known as "the official version of 3/11" has collapsed.
No Central Mastermind
The three terrorists charged by the Public Prosecutors as the leaders of the attack were acquitted by the Supreme court, at least of charges related to their role as "masterminds" of the attack. In particular, the terrorist known as Mohamed the Egyptian, who was long believed to have been the top ideologist of the attack, was even acquitted of the charge of belonging to an armed band; the reason given was that he was already on trial for this offense in a separate proceeding in an Italian court. Another of those believed by the Public Prosecutor to have been a leader of the attack, Hassan El Haski, was not convicted for his instigation of the attack; indeed, the length of his sentence for "belonging to an armed band" was reduced on appeal.
Islamist Cell Involvement? Forgettaboutit.
Two members of the so-called "Virgen del Coro" cell, who were the only link between 3/11 plot and the world of radical Islam, were flat-out acquitted. Specifically, one Basel Ghalyoun, whose DNA had been found in the Leganes apartment that later exploded under mysterious circumstances, and Mouhannad Almallah Dabas, who at one point was said to be the leader (one of a succesion of "masterminds") of the massacre plot, were both acquitted by the court.
As if that weren't enough, the Supreme Court found and stated explicitly in it's written decision that the perpetrators of the Madrid attacks were "a conspiracy or terrorist organization different and independent from Al Qaeda," even though (in the words of the Court's decision) "there could exist an ideological connection to the basic principles" of that Islamist organization.
By the way, thanks for continuing to include me in your “ping” list.
It is far better so, steely tom.
I try to do the closest translation from the original, sometimes maintaining phrase structures that are not usually utilized in English. Moreover, Luis del Pino cannot write some things plainly, in order to avoid any intent to first push him and then catch him in a lie.
I like Mr. Marco's article because of that. It provides an insight on how this can be happening, why it was tolerated.
IMHO, there are two problems that contribuited to this attitude towards 3/11:
1) The basic problem of the long debated Francoist nature of the Spanish society.
Today's Spain was modeled by Franco, an authoritarian dictator. Spaniards had the good luck of suffering a quite benign dictatorship: during the 1960’s economic growth was the highest among developed nations albeit Japan; and then there were just 7,000 inmates in prison. The repression was just a myth fed by the ones that today want to be portrayed as freedom fighters in order to gain a moral leverage. The only opposition were the far un-democratic Communist Party and ETA terror organization. Democracy was brought to Spain by the same Francoist civil servants, when he died.
Therefore, that desire for freedom among the population that appeared in other nations, such as the Communists, never had the opportunity to grow in Spain. Most Spaniards are used to a paternalistic, benign, authoritarian government.
This sentiment has not been changed by the successive democratic governments because the political parties and the oligarchies behind them have found it very useful. Furthermore, the joining of the European Union in 1986 and the Eurozone in 1998 provided a sharp economic growth, which help to maintain such ideas among the population.
Of course, there is a big minority just as advanced or democratic than any other country in western Europe, but the majority is economically Socialist, and they expect an authoritarian State that provides everything. For them, as for any Socialist, the State is god.
2) The real estate bubble has been the other factor that contributed to this attitude. 3/11 came at the highest point of a HUGE real estate bubble that provided average gains of 17% annually (but sometimes more), due to the joining of the Eurozone. Spaniards were literally bribed: who wasn't buying and selling homes, worked for construction companies. The sale of luxury cars soared, as well as the consumption of cocaine in what seemed to be the discovering of Eldorado. Third age europeans will march towards Spain and keep the demand of homes always up and prices rising forever. As it happened in Germany during the Hitler's years (see this)Spaniards wanted no political turmoil that could ended such good days.
Being Spain a Socialist economy, Zapatero's friends have underpined the economy up to the 2008 national elections, using big amounts of credit, but now the good times come to an end.
Facing the worst economic crises since the 1940's, it has been decided to close the 3/11 case before things turn worse. There was a real estate bubble, there is a credit crunch, but the case is very different from what is going on in the States.
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