By Tim Golden and Don Van Natta Jr., The New York Times
The flood of conflicting evidence and clues that emerged from the carnage of the Madrid bombings yesterday pointed in two very different directions, leaving counterterrorism officials in a country painfully familiar with terrorist violence struggling to identify a culprit.
Just hours after the bombings, the Spanish authorities blamed the Basque separatist group known as ETA. Hours later, the same officials announced the discovery of new evidence they said left open the possibility that Islamic militants had been involved.
“Could it have been Islamic fundamentalists?” one senior Spanish antiterrorism official asked last night. “It could have been. Spain is clearly a target of Al Qaeda; Osama bin Laden has said so himself.”
The scale of the violence, the indiscriminate nature of the killing and the near-simultaneity of the 10 bombings yesterday were all reminiscent of Al Qaeda. In addition, the Spanish interior minister said the police had found detonators and an audio tape of Koranic verses inside a stolen van that was parked near the station where three of the four bombed trains originated.
In a sign of concern that the violence might not be limited to Spain, France raised its national terrorism alert from the lowest level. A senior French security official said in the days before the Madrid bombings that they had indications of possible terrorist attacks on railways in France and other European nations.
Yet in the chaotic aftermath of the bombings, antiterrorism officials cautioned that other evidence seemed to implicate ETA.
One Spanish official who spoke on the condition he not be named said the dynamite-like explosive used in the attacks, Titadine, had been used before by ETA, which stands for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom.
Most recently, the official said, the police found the same explosive in a vehicle they intercepted last month as it was driven to Madrid by ETA militants. The police also found bomb-laden backpacks like those used in yesterday’s attacks when they foiled a bombing at a Madrid train station on Christmas Eve, an event they linked to ETA.
Yesterday’s bombings also came after months of intelligence reporting that ETA was planning a major attack, several Spanish officials said. The timing of the violence - with national elections scheduled for Sunday - seemed to suggest ETA’s hand as well, they said.
But even as the interior minister, Angel Acebes, was blaming ETA directly for the carnage, another senior Spanish counterterrorism official questioned privately whether the Basque group would wantonly kill so many innocents, most of whom were the sort of working-class people to whom ETA’s Marxist-oriented leaders have traditionally tried to appeal. The death toll yesterday, at least 192 people, was nearly one fourth of the nearly 850 people ETA had killed since 1968.
“I’m not so certain,” said the official, who has investigated Basque terrorism for more than a decade. “The problem is that ETA has never taken a step of this magnitude before. This would be off the charts for them.”
ETA has long demanded an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southern France. The group has been under increasing pressure from both governments in recent years, and officials said they believed its capacity for violent action appeared to have declined.
The Spanish authorities reported arresting 125 ETA members and accomplices last year. The French arrested 46 others, including some senior leaders.
Last year, ETA was blamed for three killings, two fewer than the year before. Those numbers were far lower than the 23 people who were killed in 44 ETA bombings and other attacks in 2000.
“Neither ETA nor Grapo maintains the degree of operational capability it once enjoyed,” the American State Department reported this year, referring also to a smaller radical organization called the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group. “The overall level of terrorist activity is considerably less than in the past, and the trend appears to be downward.”
Some in Spain fear that yesterday’s bombings could be an indication that the crackdown could be driving radical young Basques into the ETA underground.
“If this was ETA, it is the crazies, the cubs, who have grown more and more radical,” a senior Spanish antiterrorism official said. “The more political cadres are losing influence, and these ones are more difficult to reason with.”
In Washington, a counterterrorism official cautioned against assigning blame, saying terrorism experts would carefully review the evidence before ruling out involvement by ETA. He said American officials were still discussing whether to send experts to assist the Spanish government’s investigation.
Before yesterday, Al Qaeda had not carried out any known attacks in Spain. But prosecutors say the group has maintained cells in Spain since at least the early 1990’s, insinuating themselves among the country’s growing Arab immigrant population.
The Spanish police and intelligence agencies, strengthened in part by their long struggle against Basque separatists, began watching such groups well before most of their European counterparts.
By the mid-1990’s, they were monitoring a network of Syrian immigrants, many of them affiliated with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood whose members have since been accused of logistical and other support to the Sept. 11 hijackers.
In a nearly 700-page indictment issued last year, the Spanish investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzon accused one of the Syrians, a successful businessman named Muhammad Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi, of distributing $800,000 for the Qaeda network under the cover of a Spanish real-estate development company. Mr. Kalaje’s lawyer has denied the charges.
Mohamed Atta, the hijacker who was the pilot of the first plane to slam into the World Trade Center, visited Spain two months before the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Spanish officials said they believed Mr. Atta may have held a strategy session with other leaders of the hijacking plot outside Madrid.
The Spanish authorities also asserted links to Al Qaeda in rounding up 16 terrorism suspects in January 2003 around the northeastern cities of Barcelona and Girona. Although the police seized a cache of explosives and chemicals, most of the men were released for lack of evidence.
The antipathy toward Spain among radical Muslims has grown more palpable as the conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has strongly backed the Bush administration’s efforts to fight international terrorism and overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Despite the efforts of Spanish authorities, several European counterterrorism officials and experts said, Spain has continued to serve as an important recruiting, financial and logistical hub for Al Qaeda. Many of the dozens of Islamic terrorism suspects arrested in Spain since the Sept. 11 attacks are believed to be mid-level logistical planners and operatives who have helped move money, either through charities or legitimate businesses, the officials said.
Last July, the police in Germany arrested a man accused of being a lieutenant for Al Qaeda and who was suspected of plotting to bomb Costa del Sol resorts. The man, Mahjub Abderrazak, an Algerian who was known as “The Sheik,” was later released.
Douglas Jehl and David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington for this article.