The 2004 Madrid train bombings (also known in Spain as 11M for 11 de marzo) (or 3/11) 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 2,500. The bombings constituted the deadliest terrorist attack carried out in the history of Spain and the deadliest in Europe since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in Scotland. The attacks were carried out by radical Islamists who opposed Spanish indirect involvement in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Controversy regarding the handling and representation of the bombings by the government arose, with Spain's two main political parties — the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and the Partido Popular (PP) — accusing each other of concealing or distorting evidence for electoral reasons. The bombings occurred three days before general elections in which incumbent Prime Minister José María Aznar's PP was defeated. Immediately after the bombing, leaders of the PP claimed evidence indicating the Basque separatist organization ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) 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. The scale and precise planning of the attacks reared memories of the September 11 attacks.
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 José García Montalvo seem to suggest that indeed the bombings had important electoral impact (turning the electoral outcome against the incumbent People's Party and handing government over to the Socialist Party, PSOE).
After 21 months of investigation, judge Juan del Olmo tried Moroccan national Jamal Zougam, among several others, for his participation carrying out the attack. Although claims were made that attacks were linked to al-Qaeda, investigations and probes conducted by Spanish officials did not find any links to al-Qaeda. Findings issued by the Spanish judiciary in September 2007 found 21 individuals guilty of participating in the attacks, while rejecting the involvement of an external mastermind or direct al-Qaeda links.
Description
During the peak of Madrid rush hour on the morning of Thursday, 11 March 2004, ten explosions occurred aboard four commuter trains (cercanías). The date, 11 March, led to the 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 (IEDs) had been placed on the trains. Bomb disposal teams (TEDAX) 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 (all times given are in local time CET, UTC +1):
- Atocha Station (train number 21431) – Three bombs exploded. Based on the video recording from the station security system, the first bomb exploded at 07:37, and two others exploded within 4 seconds of each other at 07:38. The train cars affected were the sixth, fifth and fourth. A fourth device was found by the TEDAX team two hours later in the first car, which was scheduled to explode when emergency services arrived. Two hours after the first explosions, the bomb was detonated by the bomb disposal team in the first car in a controlled manner.
- El Pozo del Tío Raimundo Station (train number 21435) – At approximately 07:38, just as the train (six cars and double-decker) was starting to leave the station, two bombs exploded in different carriages. The carriages affected were the fourth and fifth. Another bomb was found in the third wagon and was detonated hours later by the TEDAX team on the platform, slightly damaging the third wagon. Yet another bomb was found in the second carriage; it was disabled hours later in the nearby Parque Azorín, and allowed the police to find several suspects.
- Santa Eugenia Station (train number 21713) – One bomb exploded at approximately 07:38. The only wagon affected was the fourth.
- Calle Téllez (train number 17305), approximately 800 meters from Atocha Station – Four bombs exploded in different carriages of the train at approximately 07:39. The wagons affected were the first, the fourth, the fifth and sixth. The train was slowing down to stop and wait for train 21431 to vacate platform 2 in Atocha.
At 08:00, emergency relief workers began arriving at the scenes of the bombings. The police reported numerous victims and mentioned 50 wounded and several dead. By 08:30 the emergency ambulance service, SAMUR (Servicio de Asistencia Municipal de Urgencia y Rescate), 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 on 21 December 1988.
Further bombings spur investigation
A device composed of 12 kilograms of Goma-2 ECO with a detonator and 136 meters of wire (connected to nothing) was found on the track of a high-speed railway line (AVE) 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 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 11 March attacks (though it had not been possible to identify a brand of dynamite from samples taken from the trains) 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 José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero about 11 March 2004 as an example of what could happen unless the government considered their petitions (in reference to the 2004 electoral swing), although the source also makes it clear that ETA 'had nothing to do' with the attack itself.
Aftermath
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 (exactly 2 and a half years) after the 11 September attacks due to the "highly symbolic and qabbalistic charge for local Al-Qaida groups" of choosing that day.
On 27 May 2005, the Prüm Convention, implementing among other things 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 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.
Responsibility
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, the Islamic extremists' alliance with ETA is highly dubious and "there is not anyway any terror case whatsoever to this day in which islamist internationalists 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.
Allegations of ETA involvement
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, 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".