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At 19:45 hrs on 13 March 2003, a bomb exploded as a train pulled into the Mulund railway station. The bomb was placed in the first class ladies' compartment and killed 10 people with 70 injured. Among the ten killed were four women in the first class compartment, two of which were police constables, and six men who were in the adjoining second class compartment.
This was the third in a series of five bombings against the city within a period of eight months. The other bombings were:
The 2003 Stavropol train bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on 5 December 2003, in Yessentuki, Stavropol Krai, Russia, when an explosion on a commuter train killed at least 46 people and injured over 170 more.
A regional electric train in Stavropol Krai was commuting from Kislovodsk to Mineralnye Vody in Stavropol Krai, when a suicide bomber armed with explosives equivalent to an estimated 7 kilograms worth of TNT detonated as the train departed from the station in Yessentuki.
Responsibility for the attack was immediately pointed at Chechen terrorists, who had committed previous attacks on trains on the line shortly before, including one on September 3, 2003, killing 7 and injuring more than 80. Ibragim Israpilov, a former local official from Chechnya, was convicted in 2004 for organizing the September blast and sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment. He is sometimes erroneously reported as being behind the December 5 bombing. Another series of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks in and around Chechnya and Moscow also occurred in 2003, which added to suspicion.
As of December 2009, there were no arrests or convictions for the Yessentuki attack.
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This massacre-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
This Chechnya-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
The 2004 Madrid train bombings were a series of coordinated, nearly simultaneous bombings against the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, on the morning of 11 March 2004—three days before Spain's general elections. The explosions killed 193 people and injured around 2,000. The bombings constituted the deadliest terrorist attack carried out in the history of Spain and the deadliest in Europe since 1988. The official investigation by the Spanish judiciary found that the attacks were directed by Al-Qaeda in Iraq, allegedly as a reaction to Spain's involvement in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Although they had no role in the planning or implementation, the Spanish miners who sold the explosives to the terrorists were also arrested.
Controversy regarding the handling and representation of the bombings by the government arose, with Spain's two main political parties — Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and Partido Popular — accusing each other of concealing or distorting evidence for electoral reasons. The bombings occurred three days before general elections in which incumbent José María Aznar's PP was defeated. Immediately after the bombing, leaders of the PP claimed evidence indicating the Basque separatist organization ETA was responsible for the bombings, while the opposition claimed that the PP was trying to prevent the public from knowing it had been an islamist attack, which would be interpreted as the direct result of Spain's involvement in Iraq, an unpopular war which the government had entered without the approval of the Spanish Parliament.
Following the attacks, there were nationwide demonstrations and protests demanding that the government "tell the truth". The prevailing opinion of political analysts is that the Aznar administration lost the general elections as a result of the handling and representation of the terrorist attacks, rather than because of the bombings per se. Results published in The Review of Economics and Statistics by economist Jose G. Montalvo seem to suggest that indeed the bombings had important electoral impact .
After 21 months of investigation, judge Juan del Olmo tried Moroccan national Jamal Zougam, among several others, for his participation carrying out the attack. The September 2007 sentence established no known mastermind nor direct al-Qaeda link.
During the peak of Madrid rush hour on the morning of Thursday, 11 March 2004, ten explosions occurred aboard four commuter trains . The date, 11th of March, led to the popular abbreviation of the incident as "11-M". All the affected trains were traveling on the same line and in the same direction between Alcalá de Henares and the Atocha station in Madrid. It was later reported that thirteen improvised explosive devices had been placed on the trains. Bomb disposal teams arriving at the scenes of the explosions detonated two of the remaining three IEDs in controlled explosions, but the third was not found until later in the evening, having been stored inadvertently with luggage taken from one of the trains. The following timeline of events comes from the judicial investigation.
All four trains had departed the Alcalá de Henares station between 07:01 and 07:14. The explosions took place between 07:37 and 07:40, as described below :
At 08:00, emergency relief workers began arriving at the scenes of the bombings. The police reported numerous victims and spoke of 50 wounded and several dead. By 08:30 the emergency ambulance service, SAMUR , had set up a field hospital at the Daoiz y Velarde sports facility. Bystanders and local residents helped relief workers, as hospitals were told to expect the arrival of many casualties. At 08:43, firefighters reported 15 dead at El Pozo. By 09:00, the police had confirmed the death of at least 30 people – 20 at El Pozo and about 10 in Santa Eugenia and Atocha. People combed the city's major hospitals in search of family members who they thought were aboard the trains. There were 193 confirmed dead victims, the last victim dying in 2014 after having been in a coma for 10 years due to one of the Atocha explosions and not having been able to recover from their injuries.
The total number of victims was higher than in any other terrorist attack in Spain, far surpassing the 21 killed and 40 wounded from a 1987 bombing at a Hipercor chain supermarket in Barcelona. On that occasion, responsibility was claimed by ETA. It was Europe's worst terror attack since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988.
A device composed of 12 kilograms of Goma-2 ECO with a detonator and 136 meters of wire was found on the track of a high-speed railway line on 2 April. The Spanish judiciary chose not to investigate that incident and the perpetrators remain unknown. The device used in the AVE incident was unable to explode because it lacked an initiation system.
Shortly after the AVE incident, police identified an apartment in Leganés, south of Madrid, as the base of operations for the individuals suspected of being the perpetrators of the Madrid and AVE attacks. The suspected militants, Sarhane Abdelmaji "the Tunisian" and Jamal Ahmidan "the Chinese", were trapped inside the apartment by a police raid on the evening of Saturday 3 April. At 9:03 pm, when the police attempted to breach the premises, the militants committed suicide by setting off explosives, killing themselves and one of the police officers.
Investigators subsequently found that the explosives used in the Leganés explosion were of the same type as those used in the 11 March attacks and in the thwarted bombing of the AVE line.
Based on the assumption that the militants killed at Leganés were indeed the individuals responsible for the train bombings, the ensuing investigation focused on how they obtained their estimated 200 kg of explosives. The investigation revealed that they had been bought from a retired miner who still had access to blasting equipment.
Five to eight suspects believed to be involved in the 11 March attacks managed to escape.
In December 2006, the newspaper ABC reported that ETA reminded Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero about 11 March 2004 as an example of what could happen unless the government considered their petitions , although the source also makes it clear that ETA 'had nothing to do' with the attack itself.
In France, the Vigipirate plan was upgraded to orange level. In Italy, the government declared a state of high alert.
In December 2004, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero claimed that the PP government erased all of the computer files related to the Madrid bombings, leaving only the documents on paper.
On 25 March 2005, prosecutor Olga Sánchez asserted that the bombings happened 911 days after the 11 September attacks due to the "highly symbolic and qabbalistic charge for local Al-Qaida groups" of choosing that day. Because 2004 was a leap year, 912 days had elapsed between 11 September 2001 and 11 March 2004.
On 27 May 2005, the Prüm Convention, implementing inter alia the principle of availability which began to be discussed after the Madrid bombings, was signed by Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, and Belgium.
On 4 January 2007, El País reported that Algerian Ouhnane Daoud, who is considered to be the mastermind of the 11-M bombings, has been searching for ways to return to Spain to prepare further attacks, though this has not been confirmed.
On 17 March 2008, Basel Ghalyoun, Mohamed Almallah Dabas, Abdelillah El-Fadual El-Akil and Raúl González Peña, having been previously found guilty by the Audiencia Nacional, were released after a Higher Court ruling. This court also verified the release of the Egyptian Rabei Osman al-Sayed.
On 14 March 2004, Abu Dujana al-Afghani, a purported spokesman for al-Qaeda in Europe, appeared in a videotape claiming responsibility for the attacks.
The Spanish judiciary stated that a loose group of Moroccan, Syrian, and Algerian Muslims and two Guardia Civil and Spanish police informants were suspected of having carried out the attacks. On 11 April 2006, Judge Juan del Olmo charged 29 suspects for their involvement in the train bombings.
No evidence has been found of al-Qaeda involvement, although an al-Qaeda claim was made the day of the attacks by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades. U.S. officials note that this group is "notoriously unreliable". In August 2007, al-Qaeda claimed to be "proud" about the Madrid 2004 bombings.
The Independent reported that "Those who invented the new kind of rucksack bomb used in the attacks are said to have been taught in training camps in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, under instruction from members of Morocco's radical Islamist Combat Group."
Mohamed Darif, a professor of political science at Hassan II University in Mohammedia, stated in 2004 that the history of the Moroccan Combat Group is directly tied to the rise of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. According to Darif, "Since its inception at the end of the 1990s and until 2001, the role of the organisation was restricted to giving logistic support to al-Qaeda in Morocco, finding its members places to live, providing them with false papers, with the opportunity of marrying Moroccans and with false identities to allow them to travel to Europe. Since 11 September, however, which brought the Kingdom of Morocco in on the side of the fight against terrorism, the organisation switched strategies and opted for terrorist attacks within Morocco itself."
Scholar Rogelio Alonso said in 2007, "the investigation had uncovered a link between the Madrid suspects and the wider world of al-Qaida". Scott Atran said "There isn't the slightest bit of evidence of any relationship with al-Qaida. We've been looking at it closely for years and we've been briefed by everybody under the sun... and nothing connects them." He provides a detailed timeline that lends credence to this view.
According to the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, this is the only extremist terrorist act in the history of Europe where international Islamic extremists collaborated with non-Muslims.
Former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar said in 2011 that Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and current head of the Tripoli Military Council, was suspected of complicity in the bombings.
Immediate reactions to the attacks in Madrid were the several press conferences held by the Spanish prime minister José María Aznar involving ETA. The Spanish government maintained this theory for two days. Because the bombs were detonated three days before the general elections in Spain, the situation had many political interpretations. The United States also initially believed ETA was responsible, then questioning if Islamic extremists were responsible. Spain's third-largest newspaper, ABC, immediately labelled the attacks as "ETA's bloodiest attack."
Due to the government theory, statements issued shortly after the Madrid attacks, including from lehendakari Juan José Ibarretxe identified ETA as the prime suspect, but the group, which usually claims responsibility for its actions, denied any involvement. Later evidence strongly pointed to the involvement of extremist Islamist groups, with the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group named as a focus of investigations.
Although ETA has a history of mounting bomb attacks in Madrid, the 11 March attacks exceeded any attack previously attempted by a European organisation. This led some experts to point out that the tactics used were more typical of militant Islamic extremist groups, perhaps with a certain link to al-Qaeda, or maybe to a new generation of ETA activists using al-Qaeda as a role model. Observers also noted that ETA customarily, but not always, issues warnings before its mass bombings and that there had been no warning for this attack. Europol director Jürgen Storbeck commented that the bombings "could have been ETA... But we're dealing with an attack that doesn't correspond to the modus operandi they have adopted up to now".
Political analysts believe ETA's guilt would have strengthened the PP's chances of being re-elected, as this would have been regarded as the death throes of a terrorist organisation reduced to desperate measures by the strong anti-terrorist policy of the Aznar administration. On the other hand, an Islamic extremist attack would have been perceived as the direct result of Spain's involvement in Iraq, an unpopular war that had not been approved by the Spanish Parliament.
All of the devices are thought to have been hidden inside backpacks. The police investigated reports of three people in ski masks getting on and off the trains several times at Alcalá de Henares between 7:00 and 7:10. A Renault Kangoo van was found parked outside the station at Alcalá de Henares containing detonators, audio tapes with Qur'anic verses, and cell phones.
The provincial chief of TEDAX declared on 12 July 2004 that damage in the trains could not be caused by dynamite, but by some type of military explosive, like C3 or C4. An unnamed source from the Aznar administration claimed that the explosive used in the attacks had been Titadine .
In March 2007, the TEDAX chief claimed that they knew that the unexploded explosive found in the Kangoo van was Goma-2 ECO the very day of the bombings. He also asserted that "it is impossible to know" the components of the explosives that went off in the trains – though he later asserted that it was dynamite. The Judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez replied "I cannot understand" to these assertions.
A radio report mentioned a plastic explosive called "Special C". However, the government said that the explosive found in an unexploded device, discovered among bags thought to be victims' lost luggage, was the Spanish made Goma-2 ECO. The unexploded device contained 10 kg of explosive with 1 kg of nails and screws packed around it as shrapnel. In the aftermath of the attacks, however, the chief coroner alleged that no shrapnel was found in any of the victims.
Goma-2 ECO was never before used by al-Qaeda, but the explosive and the modus operandi were described by The Independent as ETA trademarks, although the Daily Telegraph came to the opposite conclusion.
Two bombs, one in Atocha and another in El Pozo stations, numbers 11 and 12, were detonated accidentally by the TEDAX. According to the provincial chief of the TEDAX, deactivated rucksacks contained some other type of explosive. The 13th bomb, which was transferred to a police station, contained dynamite, although it did not explode because it was missing two wires connecting the explosives to the detonator. That bomb used a mobile phone as a timer, requiring a SIM card to activate the alarm and thereby detonate. The analysis of the SIM card allowed the police to arrest an alleged perpetrator. On Saturday, 13 March, when three Moroccans and two Pakistani Muslims were arrested for the attacks, it was confirmed that the attacks came from an Islamic group. Only one of the five persons detained that day was finally prosecuted.
The Guardia Civil developed an extensive action plan to monitor records corresponding with the use of weapons and explosives. There were 166,000 inspections conducted throughout the country between March 2004 and November 2004. About 2,500 violations were discovered and over 3 tons of explosives, 11 kilometers of detonating cord, and over 15,000 detonators were seized.
On 3 April 2004, in Leganés, south Madrid, four terrorists died in an apparent suicide explosion, killing one Grupo Especial de Operaciones police officer and wounding eleven policemen. According to witnesses and media, between five and eight suspects escaped that day.
Security forces carried out a controlled explosion of a suspicious package found near the Atocha station and subsequently deactivated the two undetonated devices on the Téllez train. A third unexploded device was later brought from the station at El Pozo to a police station in Vallecas, and became a central piece of evidence for the investigation. It appears that the El Pozo bomb failed to detonate because a cell-phone alarm used to trigger the bomb was set 12 hours late.
Sectors of the People's Party , and certain media, such as El Mundo newspaper and the COPE radio station, continue to support theories relating the attack to a vast conspiracy to remove the governing party from power. Support for the conspiracy was also given by the Asociación de Víctimas del Terrorismo , Spain's largest association of victims of terrorism.