Spain Campaigned to Pin Blame on ETA
Despite
Evidence to Contrary, Basque Group Was Focus in Blasts
By
Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A01
MADRID, March 16 -- In the
first frantic hours after coordinated bomb blasts ripped through several packed
commuter trains Thursday morning, the government of outgoing Prime Minister
Jose Maria Aznar undertook an intense campaign to convince the Spanish public
and world opinion-makers that the Basque separatist group ETA had carried out
the attacks, which killed 201 people and wounded more than 1,500.
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Beginning immediately after
the blasts, Aznar and other officials telephoned journalists, stressing ETA's
responsibility and dismissing speculation that Islamic extremists might be
involved. Spanish diplomats pushed a hastily drafted resolution blaming ETA
through the U.N. Security Council. At an afternoon news conference, when a
reporter suggested the possibility of an al Qaeda connection, the interior
minister, Angel Acebes, angrily denounced it as "a miserable attempt to
disrupt information and confuse people."
"There is no doubt
that ETA is responsible," Acebes said.
Within days, that assertion
was in tatters, and with it the reputation and fortunes of the ruling party.
Suspicion that the government manipulated information -- blaming ETA in order
to divert any possible link between the bombings and Aznar's unpopular support
for the war in Iraq -- helped fuel the upset victory of the Socialist Workers'
Party in Sunday's elections. By then, Islamic extremists linked to al Qaeda had
become the focus of the investigation.
Government officials insist
that they never misled the public, and that they released in a timely manner
all the information and evidence they had gathered. "We told the truth at
all times to the Spanish people," Acebes said on Monday.
In retrospect, however,
there were signs that the government was at least selective in releasing
information about possible culprits. By 11 a.m. Thursday, police had already
discovered an abandoned white van in Alcala de Henares -- a town where the
bombed trains passed through -- containing seven detonators and a cassette tape
with verses of the Koran recited in Arabic, officials said later. Sources
familiar with Spanish intelligence services said the CNI, the National
Intelligence Center, had suspected al Qaeda from the beginning.
The existence of a
potential link to Islamic radicals was not revealed to the public until just
before King Juan Carlos spoke on national television at 8:30 p.m.
Significantly, Spanish observers
said, the king, in his solemn address, expressed confidence that "the
criminals will be put in prison," but never mentioned ETA or any other
possible culprit. Asked whether the king was satisfied with the way the
government had handled information, the palace declined to respond, citing its
customary refusal to comment on government matters.
The first bomb went off at
7:39 a.m., on a jam-packed commuter train at the Atocha station in central
Madrid. By 7:42, 10 bombs had exploded -- seven at Atocha, two at nearby El
Pozo station and one at Santa Eugenia. Although the initial figures put the
death toll at about 20, authorities knew the number would rise dramatically and
that this would be the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history.
That was when officials
began their campaign to pin the blame on ETA, which the Aznar government has
pursued vigorously and successfully.
The government had good
reason to suspect ETA, whose initials in Basque stand for Basque Homeland and
Freedom. The group has killed hundreds of civilians in terrorist attacks
stretching back decades. Police reported on Christmas Eve having thwarted an
ETA plot to set off two bombs at a Madrid train station. On Feb. 29, police
arrested two ETA members near Madrid as they drove a van packed with a half-ton
of explosives.
Immediately after
Thursday's bombings, Foreign Minister Ana Palacio telephoned her British
counterpart, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, to say that it was ETA, according to
a British official, who added, "We had no independent evidence of our own
that the Spanish were wrong." Less than two hours later, Straw was on
television saying, "It looks to be an ETA terrorist outrage, and that is
the information we've received from Madrid."
At the same time, the
Spanish Foreign Ministry was sending instructions to its embassies, saying
diplomats "should use any opportunity to confirm ETA's responsibility for
these brutal attacks," according to a copy of the letter published in the
Spanish daily El Pais. Spanish officials have confirmed that the instructions
went out, but said they were only for "guidance."
Meanwhile, Arnaldo Otegi,
head of the banned Batasuna party, which Aznar's government alleges to be ETA's
political wing, condemned the attack, which experts on the Basque situation
said was unusual. Otegi's condemnation was given wide coverage on radio
stations outside Madrid. Between noon and 2 p.m. Thursday, Catalan radio was
airing discussion programs exploring the possibility of al Qaeda involvement.
On one Catalan station, 91.0 FM, Otegi said in an interview that the attacks
were carried out by "the Arab resistance, possibly in retaliation for the
Spanish presence in Iraq."
Spain Campaigned to Pin Blame on ETA
But in Madrid, radio
stations were referring to "the ETA attacks" and carried none of the
discussion about whether others might have been involved.
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Managing the coverage of
the disaster became a priority for the government, which contacted both the
Spanish and international news media, stressing the official line that the
bombings were the work of ETA.
El Pais, which was
preparing a special edition on the attacks, received several calls directly
from Aznar, its reporters confirmed. The editor of the Catalan-based paper El
Periodico said Aznar called twice. Aznar "courteously cautioned me not to
be mistaken. ETA was responsible," the editor, Antonio Franco, wrote in an
editorial Tuesday. At a news conference on Friday, Aznar said he had called
several newspapers, saying he wanted to explain the government's view.
The government spokesman's
office at Moncloa, the prime minister's office, also placed calls to at least
10 foreign correspondents during the day, according to Steven Adolf, a Dutch
reporter for NRC Handelsblatt and president of the foreign correspondents club
here. Most of the calls were identical, journalists said.
Henk Boom, another Dutch
journalist, said he received a call from a spokeswoman at about 5 p.m.
"She said she was told to tell foreign correspondents that there was one
official version -- that ETA was responsible for the attacks, and only ETA,"
he said.
Reading from a text, the
spokeswoman gave three reasons why ETA was the culprit, Boom said: No one had
asserted responsibility, which followed ETA's style of not making claims for at
least a week; the type of explosive was similar to that normally used by ETA;
and there was no call beforehand warning of the attacks, another characteristic
of ETA -- a point some journalists have disputed.
By Thursday night, with the
announcement of the discovery of the van with the Arabic tape and the claim of responsibility
on behalf of al Qaeda in a London Arabic-language newspaper, public doubt began
to set in. The morning newspapers Friday ran side-by-side articles comparing
the possibilities of al Qaeda and ETA involvement.
By Friday night, police
found new leads -- the discovery of a sports bag containing undetonated
explosives and a mobile telephone. At a news conference, however, Acebes
continued to insist ETA was the main suspect. "How is it that after 30
years of attacks, they are not going to be the prime suspects?" Acebes
said. Still, he said, "We haven't closed off any line of
investigation."
At the makeshift shrines
set up to honor the victims, young people gathering to light candles and lay
flowers were starting to voice skepticism about the ETA claim.
On Saturday night -- hours
before the polls opened -- the government announced the arrests of three
Moroccans and two Indians, and the discovery of a videotape from a purported al
Qaeda official asserting responsibility for the attacks. Thousands of Spaniards
responded by taking to the streets, banging pots and pans in protests and
denouncing the government.
That voter anger swept the
Socialists back to power for the first time in eight years.