5 arrested in Madrid train bombings

By Matthew Schofield
Knight Ridder Newspapers

	PETER DEJONG / AP Black mourning ribbons adorn a woman's Spanish flag during a protest yesterday in Madrid against Thursday's bombings.
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MADRID, Spain — Evidence mounted that Spain's worst terrorist incident was the work of Islamic terrorists after authorities arrested three Moroccans and two Indians yesterday and the interior minister announced today that a speaker on a newly discovered videotape claimed al-Qaida carried out the train bombings.

Interior Minister Angel Acebes announced the discovery of the videotape at a post-midnight news conference but said authorities could not vouch for its authenticity.

The speaker, claiming to be the spokesman for al-Qaida in Europe, said, "We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid exactly 2½ years after the attacks on New York and Washington."

He said Thursday's terror bombings of four commuter trains that killed 200 and injured more than 1,400 were in "response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies."

The Spanish government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has been a strong ally of the Bush administration in the war in Iraq, including sending troops, despite strong opposition from most of the population.

The videotape and the arrests were the strongest indications yet that the bombings were the work of Islamic terrorists and not the violent Basque separatist group ETA, previously identified by top government officials as the prime suspect. Aznar has been a hard-liner against ETA.

	Spain's Interior Minister Angel Acebes

Acebes said the five suspects were arrested in Madrid after being linked to a prepaid phone card that detectives found in a satchel full of explosives discovered on one of four bombed trains. Spanish radio said the five were identified by calls made with the card.

A spokesman for the Moroccan government identified the three Moroccans as Jamal Zougam, 30; Mohamed Bekkali, 31, a mechanic; and Mohamed Chaoui, 34. All three are from northern Morocco, but the government gave no further details about them.

"One might have connections with Moroccan extremist groups. But it is still very early to establish to what degree," Acebes said. He did not name any group.

Spanish citizens were among 33 people killed by suicide bombings that targeted Jewish targets and a Spanish restaurant close to the Spanish consulate in Casablanca, Morocco in May 2003.

Those attacks were blamed on Salafia Jihadia, a secretive, radical Islamic group thought by Moroccan authorities to have links to al-Qaida.

Near Barcelona, thousands took to the streets in anger upon hearing the news of the arrests. "We believe the government has been lying about this investigation the whole time. This just proves it," yelled one man in the crowd.

	DENIS DOYLE / AP Relatives and friends attend the burial yesterday at Madrid's South Cemetery of a victim of the train bombings.

One banner read: "Aznar, because of you we all pay."

"Maybe now the truth will come out," Fernando Hernandez, a college student, said after hearing about the arrests. "All we want is the truth."

Spanish authorities announced the arrests on the eve of national elections for parliament, and the news was described by Spanish television commentators as potentially devastating to the governing Populist Party, even though Aznar is not standing for re-election after eight years in office.

Aznar's hand-picked candidate to succeed him, Mariano Rajoy, charged that the rally violated a law banning political demonstrations on the day before an election.

The Populists were only 3 to 5 percentage points ahead of the Socialists before opinion polls were stopped before the blasts. The Socialist leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has promised to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.

The news came after three days during which investigators insisted that the only plausible suspect in the bombings was ETA, a terrorist group from the north of Spain that has been planting bombs and shooting government officials for 30 years. ETA has strongly denied involvement in Thursday's bombings.

Despite the identification of a possible al-Qaida link, the government had said only ETA made sense in the crime because of two facts: Two ETA members were arrested Christmas Eve while attempting to board a commuter train with satchels containing bombs of a similar design to those used Thursday. And the explosives used Thursday match explosives seized in February from an ETA van heading toward Madrid.

Still, an investigation was opened Thursday afternoon into a possible Middle Eastern link when police found a stolen van near the station from which one of the trains left containing seven detonators, verses from the Koran and an Arabic audio tape.

A short time later, an Arabic-language newspaper in London said it had received a claim of responsibility issued in the name of al-Qaida.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.

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