Posted Sunday, March 14, 2004; 16.37GMT
He was one of hundreds of rescue workers who combed through the wreckage Thursday, looking for survivors in the scorched and twisted compartments of a commuter train at Madrid's El Pozo del Tío Raimundo station. When he came across an unremarkable sports bag, he assumed it belonged to one of the victims and put it aside; at some point amid the grim triage the bag was taken to a local police station, where it was added to a mountain of unclaimed personal possessions — purses, briefcases, shoes, coats, laptop computers. In the chaotic aftermath of the Madrid bomb attacks, no one thought to open the bag.
And then it rang. At 7:40 p.m., exactly 12 hours after a series of bombs had gone off on four trains, a mobile phone in the sports bag sounded an alarm, according to the Madrid daily El País. When investigators looked inside for the phone, they found it attached to two copper detonators, which were connected to 10 kg of a gelatinous dynamite. The bag was stuffed with nails and screws to heighten the bomb's power. For some reason, the device did not detonate. Instead, it became the biggest break yet in the hunt for those responsible for the massacre.
A mobile-phone bomb is a simple but effective way to commit mass murder from a distance. The tactic worked 10 times during the Thursday-morning rush hour in Madrid, as powerful explosives ripped open carriages, killing at least 200 commuters and wounding more than 1,500 others. Two similar devices were destroyed by police in controlled explosions. But thanks to a terrorist's mistake and a rescue worker's accidental discovery, the final bomb survived. It proved to be lucky 13 for the investigators: the Motorola handset and its SIM card supplied the vital clues that led to the arrests on Saturday afternoon of five suspects — three Moroccans and two Indian nationals. The five were held in connection with illegal manipulation of the phone and its SIM card.
Two Spanish citizens of Indian origin were also questioned by the police. According to a Spanish government official, at least two and possibly all four of the Indians ran a shop in Madrid where they sold — not always legally — prepaid sim cards. Spanish defense analyst Rafael L. Bardají suggests they may have been unwitting collaborators in the train bombings. "Perhaps the poor guys were only the people who prepared the illegal phones," he says. "The question is: To whom did they sell the phones?"
In announcing the detentions, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said, "We're continuing to work on all fronts," referring to the possibility that the Basque terrorist group ETA may have been behind the attacks, "although these arrests open an important new avenue of investigation." It was a far cry from even earlier that day when the Minister still considered ETA the prime suspect. Spanish and French authorities say the Moroccans may be linked to the synchronized suicide bombings that killed 33 innocent people in Casablanca last May. Government sources in Morocco are more emphatic, telling TIME that there was evidence that all three had connections to the extremist groups believed to have directed those attacks, Salafia Jihadia and its offshoot cell, Assirat al Moustaqim (Straight Path). These groups, Moroccan sources say, are associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. The Casablanca operation loosely resembled the Madrid massacre: there were well-orchestrated blasts in five locations, and in each instance the explosives were carried in bags or rucksacks. One important difference: the Casablanca attacks were all suicide bombings. So far, Spanish investigators have found no evidence that suicide bombers were at work in Madrid. "They were in Spain for a reason," says independent terrorism expert Roland Jacquard. "The thesis now is ... they've been continuing work there to replicate the Casablanca strike in even bolder form."
The Islamic connection got another boost late on Saturday night when Acebes announced that the Spanish government had retrieved a videotaped message from a man purporting to be al-Qaeda's military spokesman in Europe. The local Madrid television station TeleMadrid received a call from a man with an Arab accent saying a tape had been placed in a wastebasket near the city's main mosque and the municipal morgue. Police secured the area, picked up the tape and translated it. According to Acebes, a man speaking Arabic with a Moroccan accent identifies himself as Abu Dujan al-Afghani, the al-Qaeda military spokesman, and says: "We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid ... It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies ... There will be more if God wills it. You love life and we love death ... if you don't put an end to your injustices more and more blood will run." Spanish law-enforcement officials are checking the tape's authenticity.
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