| Officials still divided on whom to blame for bombings { March 13 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/international/europe/13TERR.html?ei=5062&en=8038eb31b836e873&ex=1079758800&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/international/europe/13TERR.html?ei=5062&en=8038eb31b836e873&ex=1079758800&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=
March 13, 2004 THE INVESTIGATION Officials Still Divided on Whom to Blame for Madrid Bombings By TIM GOLDEN Spanish officials investigating the Madrid terror attacks provided little new information yesterday about who might have carried out the bombings, and gave conflicting interpretations of the evidence that emerged.
The Spanish interior minister, Ángel Acebes, said the Basque separatist group ETA remained the government's prime suspect in the bombings, in which at least 199 people have died.
[On Saturday, Reuters quoted Spanish regional authorities as saying the death toll had risen to 200.]
Some Spanish antiterrorism officials said, however, that they questioned the government's seeming insistence on implicating the Basque group despite information that suggested the possible involvement of Islamic militants.
The difference of views among Spanish officials crystallized over an unexploded bomb that investigators recovered from one of the four trains blown up on Thursday morning as they carried commuters into Madrid from the working-class suburb of Alcalá de Henares.
Mr. Acebes said the bomb, hidden in a gym bag, was made of a Spanish-made blasting explosive known as Goma 2-E that ETA has often used in the past. The bombers also used shrapnel to increase the impact of the bomb and a cellphone as a trigger, he said.
Privately, however, another Spanish antiterrorism official said Goma 2, a gelatinous, nitroglycerin-based explosive that is typically used in mining, has been linked to ETA only rarely since the Spanish authorities began to tightly guard supplies of it in the 1980's.
After those controls were imposed, ETA began to depend mainly on explosives stolen abroad, particularly in France and Germany, including a huge cache of a dynamite-like explosive known as titadine, the official said.
Other Spanish officials said they were more intrigued by the link between the unexploded bomb and a stolen van that was found Thursday near the Alcalá station where three of the four trains originated, in which seven detonators were discovered.
The detonator on the unexploded bomb, as Mr. Acebes disclosed yesterday, was the same as those found in the van.
The van also contained some documents in Arabic and an audiotape of readings from the Koran that one official said referred to the education of children.
In addition, callers to a Basque-language newspaper and television station yesterday denied on ETA's behalf any involvement by the group in the Madrid bombings. ETA typically takes responsibility for its attacks in the Basque news media.
Two Spanish antiterrorism officials said they expected it would take another day or two to begin to draw firmer conclusions from the forensic analysis of samples taken from the bomb sites.
With Spanish national elections scheduled for Sunday, one official said he was suspicious of the government's sudden restraint in assessing the evidence gathered so far in the Madrid bombings. "I think they may be holding back information so that it doesn't influence the vote," the official said.
American counterterrorism officials were careful not to speculate about who might be responsible for the Madrid attacks, deferring to the Spanish government.
One American official cautioned specifically against "leaning too far in the direction of Islamic extremist involvement," despite the apparent link between the stolen van and the recovered bomb.
"It is the kind of thing that ETA certainly would have the capability to carry out," the official said.
American officials also noted that there had been no increase in the "chatter" in monitored terrorist communications that they often pick up before attacks by Al Qaeda.
Mr. Acebes said there was ample evidence that ETA had in fact been trying to carry out a major attack, citing three foiled plots that bore similarities to the Madrid bombings.
Last December, the Spanish authorities intercepted two accused Basque militants who they said were headed to the capital with nearly 100 pounds of explosives that they planned to detonate on Christmas Eve at a train station in the northern part of the city. On Feb. 29, the police said they had arrested two other Basque suspects driving to Madrid with 1,000 pounds of explosives hidden in a truck.
And last month, the European police organization Europol warned of "large-scale operations" by ETA aimed at "creating considerable public shock and international coverage," according to an excerpt of the report cited by Agence France-Presse.
But officials who were more skeptical of ETA's involvement said none of that necessarily led to the conclusion that the group would or could carry out attacks on such a scale.
Before Thursday, the most victims killed in an ETA attack had been 21, in a Barcelona supermarket bombing in 1987. But public outrage at that indiscriminate attack plunged the group into a crisis that eventually led to the ascendancy of more moderate leaders.
The moderate leaders, however, have since "lost control of their commandos," one Spanish official said.
Douglas Jehl and David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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