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He always looked for the good side of people.
He didn't look for material things, the economic side or for a nice tracksuit.
He wouldn't criticize anybody,
so I thought "you're as nice as you are dumb." It makes me mad.
The smell after playing football.
He left his shirt and they grabbed it. Poof.
And he's like… What does your mom use to wash this?
And, ah, I was going home from work… I heard the news on the radio…
Mmm… I got really nervous.
A huge overwhelming sensation and…
seeing hours and more hours go by and that…
The only one no one had heard from was Dani.
The taxi driver… crying with us.
I still believed that Dani was helping the victims.
I got home, my father was crying.
And I didn't understand, I told him, hey, it's fine, everything's fine, dad, no…
Everything's fine, and…
And I got the call about them not being able to find Dani. But…
I had already talked to him, so…
it couldn't be and I was saying that…
He was going to show up and that I'd give him a hug,
I wanted him to show up so badly…
And he never showed up.
Up until March 10th, 2004,
I was a normal person, I think I was happy. I had a job.
I was able to send both my children to college.
I was working on research on new drugs to treat cancer.
I was a commander in the terrestrial… terrestrial army.
I worked as an electrician and as plumber.
I was a photojournalist at Agencia EFE.
I was a regional dance teacher.
She was in a dance group, too.
I used to work at… the station.
I'm a security guard.
I was working as a train operator
at the Madrid commuter trains network.
Back then, I juggled
working as a civil servant and I drove a taxi.
I had two jobs.
I was a completely happy girl.
I didn't have any kind of problem, everything for me was… great.
My life was… just like any other 19, 20-year-old guy's.
I found out I was pregnant. I was happy.
There was nothing
foreshadowing that something would happen that day
different from… any other day.
A regular working day.
He kissed me goodbye like every morning.
You have some coffee, you take a shower.
You get dressed and… you leave in a hurry to catch the train.
I remember I bought the newspaper that day.
Because Real Madrid had won the day before.
When he said goodbye, his mother told him…
Aren't you going to kiss me goodbye, son?
As he was walking down the corridor…
I had this feeling…
And I thought, "Don't leave."
I saw I was about to miss the train, so I automatically ran to catch it.
And I caught it.
When the doors closed, we heard a very loud noise.
We all fell to the ground
and smoke came out. I managed to get out of the wagon.
I looked right,
and to my surprise I saw a blown-up wagon.
I was on the platform
and the wagon to my left and the one I'd just gotten off from…
exploded.
What crossed my mind was to get out.
To get out of there no matter what.
There is no cowardice in a situation like that.
It's survival.
Through the security walkie-talkies
we were told we all had to go…
downstairs…
to the platforms.
I threw myself down to protect myself
and jumped to the railway on the right.
There a third bomb exploded,
and everything went black.
The third explosion hit us upfront.
The blast threw us down.
I was knocked unconscious.
The first shards
of glass hit me
on the left side of my face.
You see… horror
Images that I think… no one should see.
I always sat in the same wagon.
Usually on the same seat, right next to the window.
I remember the beeping sound when the doors closed.
I started the… train.
I didn't hear any noise. You see a flash…
and smoke.
A black cloud enveloped me and everything started spinning.
I was under a seat.
I couldn't see anything.
I started screaming, "What is this?"
I-it's is a bomb. It's a bomb.
And I remember nothing else.
I saw through the rear-view mirror…
how the second bomb…
the second bomb exploded.
That image… I have it…
It's impossible to… to forget.
Because of the huge noise from the blast…
it's almost like you're deaf.
You hear like when someone talks
while your head is underwater.
That's how I was hearing.
I saw things that…
that were really hard.
The first sensation was a lot of light spinning around me
and that I had lost control of my body.
I tried to sit up, but I wasn't able to.
We were out and got back in to help people out.
While we were taking people out,
the fifth wagon exploded.
I don't remember anything after that blast.
Ah…
Lord… protect me.
Uh… me and my family.
At that moment…
everything… turned black.
Once we got there we realized
just how big the tragedy actually was.
First, our colleagues, we looked at each other
and we told ourselves, "Okay, well, what is this?"
Where do we begin?
Everything was quiet.
It was dead silence. You could only hear mobile phones.
When I woke up, I knew I was on the train,
but I couldn't see the train anywhere.
I was suddenly on the seat that the woman next to me was in.
I realized,
to my surprise, I no longer had pants nor shoes.
The people who were in front of me, who were…
who were right above the bomb were completely torn apart.
My legs were cut up to my knees.
I tried to get up. That was when I realized that…
my legs… It was impossible to get up
because they were completely torn apart.
I was in so much pain.
It was if my whole body had been torn…
my whole body, so much pain.
We began to…
do something called triage.
To determine which patients
should receive medical attention first depending on the injuries they have,
how likely they are to… to survive.
I was helping someone and my partner, well…
she asked, "What can I do?"
And the SAMUR physician who was attending that person…
told her, "Help him die in peace."
Help him die peacefully.
My partner, well…
she held his hand…
and simply waited for him to die.
A firetruck arrived and…
we started asking them to cut the doors
from the trains so we could use them as stretchers.
The windows from nearby houses had shattered
and through those broken windows people were throwing blankets for us.
A friend of hers called me…
and she only said to me, "Bomb at Atocha."
I had my mobile here, I grabbed it…
and I called my mother.
He said, "Mom, there was an explosion."
And… he said, "Mommy come, come mommy."
"Dad, dad!
There was an explosion, and my arm is destroyed."
And then the call cut off.
So I went…
to the school to check if she had arrived and they told me
she hadn't.
I woke up that morning and thought I would call him to say "happy birthday",
it's his birthday today and I should be the first, I'm his mother.
One of the answers to the calls was…
"We can't find your sister."
When I called, it went through, but…
no one picked up.
Since we were undocumented people,
we didn't want the police to come and start asking us questions.
I held on to that lady and was asking her to help me.
I told her I had to leave that place because…
I didn't want to be deported,
but she said, "How can you leave if you can't even walk?"
I had blood all over me.
I didn't have papers back then
and I was just hoping the police wouldn't catch me because I had no pa--
I remember… a boy next to me…
He was dead… very young.
One man came onto the train and saw…
a finger… that was moving.
He had a wound in his chest.
When I saw the wound, what I did was put my hand in.
I put my hand inside him.
With his hand he…
he lessened the blood loss.
In Spain, we felt
the permanent threat of local terrorism.
The terrorism carried out by ETA.
Two weeks before some ETA members had been caught.
They had come to Madrid with a truck full of explosives
and they were targeting something big, but it wasn't known what.
It's clear.
ETA has tried to wreck democracy.
It was a Thursday.
And the general elections would take place on Sunday.
Thus, there was a chance this would directly
impact the election.
Terrorists must know that any government
will give them the same answer.
And that it will pursue them
until they answer for their atrocious crimes.
This is not the time to talk about anything
but the anger we feel because of this savagery
and the support for the families of the victims.
Once the people that need
medical attention are removed from the area,
the areas are secured.
An inspection of the scene begins,
and all the objects are observed and then orderly removed.
Suddenly, we can hear people's voices and screams saying there's another bomb.
And a personal and emotional struggle begins.
The guys from TEDAX told us we had to leave the place immediately.
We had to make sure there were no remaining living victims.
The firefighters didn't know…
And we all stayed there.
Because some people were still alive.
A colleague heard a noise, heard a moan
and the guy said, "we need to search here."
There was a… a girl…
who was screaming inside, but what we heard was so low.
And indeed, there was a person
underneath… several people.
They saw me, they saw that I…
that I was breathing and…
I remember that they said, "This one's alive, she's alive!"
Our first instinct was to grab her hand.
And when she grabbed my hand, I remember she held it very very tight, like saying
"I don't know where I am or what happened,
but I know this is what's going to save me."
In the end,
two bags with explosive devices were found.
One at El Pozo station,
which had to be neutralized.
The other at Atocha,
and despite TEDAX's efforts to deactivate it,
they realized that it wasn't safe enough to do it manually,
so it was neutralized by allowing it to explode.
The firefighters had to carry out the hardest job.
We were recovering the bodies, and in some cases it was really hard.
I was obsessed with looking at every spot, at every corner
so we wouldn't miss anything.
We looked underneath the rails
and by tracing the blast wave
I told one firefighter, "Let's get up on the roof
in case there's anything there." Indeed, there was a dead body
on the roof…
An incident infinitely more painful…
considering how many feelings we experienced.
The wounds were different.
It wasn't a war, and these were not soldiers and there were so many.
I'd never seen a clinical chart written on an abdomen with a marker.
The patients arrived completely out of themselves.
Most of them were deaf.
I had a burst vertebra.
I was missing a piece of… of my forehead and my nose.
I had tubes coming out of everywhere.
The only thing I was thinking of was that I had lost my baby.
It felt… impossible, like a nightmare,
but no, it was real.
I didn't care that I had burns, I didn't care that I had broken bones,
I didn't care that one of my legs had been amputated.
I didn't care about any of that. I was alive.
The blast wave had cut my elbow.
The doctor recommended cutting his arm off, to amputate his left arm.
My husband showed me a picture of my children,
because I couldn't remember I had children.
When I woke up…
My husband, my parents, my family was there.
I was trying to tell them how my daughter was dressed.
That same morning I talked to Baltasar Garzón
and told him, "Those ETA people are bastards."
And Garzón told me, "Alberto, it wasn't ETA."
I told Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, he asked me,
and I told him it wasn't ETA.
And I remember he said, "What are you saying?"
I said, "No, it wasn't them."
He told me it wasn't ETA's modus operandi.
I can tell you at this moment ETA
doesn't have enough operating forces to carry out an attack this big.
The abertzale left is not even considering
as a hypothesis that ETA
is behind what happened today in Madrid.
The Government convened a crisis cabinet,
and to our surprise, we discovered
that the people who were called to participate in the crisis cabinet
were people who had little to do
with any police or security department
and had more to do with the Popular Party.
And furthermore, the Director of the National Intelligence Service
hadn't been asked to join.
That was the first time I had a feeling
that things were starting to become delicate
and might end up becoming dangerous.
There were two meetings that morning.
One took place at the Moncloa and was presided by the president,
and another one at the Ministry of Interior,
which was presided by the Minister Acebes.
I wasn't invited to either of them.
There was a meeting of the police higherups
between 12:00 and 1:00 PM at the Ministry of Interior.
One of the police commanders called
the police commander in charge of the TEDAX, who was working
in one of the attack sites, to ask him if he knew anything about the explosives.
And he said it could be dynamite with a detonating cord,
that's what Santiago Cuadro Jaén says.
And Pedro Díaz Pintado says he heard him say
it might be Titadine with a detonating cord.
Both have sworn to death that it was the other that made the mistake.
Santiago Cuadro says he never said Titadine
and Díaz Pintado says he heard Titadine.
That's what he reported to the rest of the police commanders
and what he later reported to the minister.
That morning we were told that what had blown was Titadine,
not goma-2 ECO, which is what actually blew up.
Titadine was ETA's usual weapon.
The Titadine issue is a rumor
that started spreading in the first hours immediately after the attacks
when we still weren't able to determine the type of explosive.
First, because there was no expert analysis
and second, because the expert analysis that was done later
could only determine the type of explosive
used for the explosion, not the brand.
And Titadine is a brand.
The President of the Government José María Aznar called
all the main newspapers' directors to tell them
the government was certain ETA was behind the attacks.
We received a direct phone call from the President.
He told us then that
the most likely hypothesis they were going with
was that the terrorist organization ETA was behind the attack.
The President of the Government considered
ETA directly responsible for the attack without any doubt whatsoever.
We had just closed the edition of the newspaper
with the front page headline
"Terrorist Massacre in Madrid."
And after Aznar's call,
I changed the headline
to "ETA Massacre in Madrid."
How could we not trust the word of the President?
The police, due to the M.O., discarded ETA
almost from the beginning.
I felt pretty uncomfortable…
because an attack of such magnitude
was something that ETA, unless it was a faction
that was trying to split from them,
wasn't interested in.
At this moment, security forces and corps
as well as the Ministry of Interior, have no doubt
that the terrorist organization ETA is behind the attack.
There is no possible nor desirable negotiation with these murderers
who have so many times brought death throughout all of Spain.
Spanish television is providing you information on the series of attacks
in Madrid through which ETA has tried to plant
the seeds of chaos and panic at the end of the electoral campaign.
The government called the United Nations to demand
a statement condemning the attacks.
They asked and insisted that the Security Council
condemn the attacks.
The government insisted,
that as statement of condemnation was not enough,
it had to say that the attacks had been perpetrated by ETA.
The Renault Kangoo was found around noon
and people from the Provincial Information Brigade showed up.
They said that the Renault didn't match
the information that a vehicle manipulated by ETA should provide.
When we found the van, there were some remaining
explosive devices and it was determine they were made of goma-2 ECO.
The policemen in charge managed the information correctly,
but it is obvious that there was
a discrepancy between the information provided
and the information the public had.
A van was found
in Alcalá de Henares
and in the front seat we found
seven detonating devices and also among others tapes,
we found one in Arabic containing
Quran verses regarding teaching.
This made me instruct
our police forces and corps not to dismiss any line of investigation.
I insisted that our main line of investigation, the one the police
and the national guard was considering as essential, same as this morning,
was that of the terrorist group ETA.
Spain is still in shock of this tragedy
caused by the series of attacks that happened
today that, according to most of the hypotheses,
ETA carried out in Madrid.
A letter supposedly from the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda
was sent to an Arabic newspaper in London
and in it the group claims to be behind
this morning's attacks in Madrid.
Al-Qaeda justifies the attacks as part
of old unsettled debts in what they call the Spanish crusade.
It was very painful to see how the issue
of the people who died was slowly fading away.
The dead bodies were taken to pavilion 6 at IFEMA.
Then the autopsies began.
There were many families who didn't know yet
that their relative was dead.
They were holding on to the hope that they
might find them at the hospital among the unidentified wounded.
To everyone that approached and asked me
if I needed something, I would answer, "Look for my boy."
I believed my son would show up any minute.
It was past 11.
It was past 12.
All night without knowing anything.
They explained the same thing, as always. Dad had gone to heaven because…
some evil people wanted to take him.
That feeling of not wanting to be called.
Of not wanting
to hear your family's name, your daughter's name.
We told a family that…
their relative was dead.
And we would accompany them
immediately to identify the body.
It seemed that they had found…
Daniel's body.
They had to make a DNA test to identify him properly.
I only remember that I said one phrase.
Please, even if it's a lie…
swear to me… that my son died without any suffering.
The police told me we needed to see a picture.
And I told them it was my daughter.
My husband went in
to identify a person, thinking it was his daughter.
But he said it wasn't.
And it was his daughter.
It's the hardest thing
any father could go through,
or any mother.
I was so stubborn about being one of the persons going in.
And I went in.
And there she was.
And then…
that was it.
All of us were wondering, "How can I help?"
All the wounded had someone
next to them holding their hand.
People from the streets.
He held my hand and told me all along,
"Don't worry, we're going to help you."
There were people who were still alive but… no…
They didn't have any chance.
I never imagined someone who wasn't a health worker could do such thing.
In that moment, some people did things that…
that under normal circumstances they wouldn't do.
I thought they were going to leave, but when I said "Let's go look inside",
eight or ten people went in and those eight or ten stayed until the end.
The lines to donate blood
had no end.
The taxi driver told me I didn't have to pay him anything and wished me luck.
Everyone showed up. Everyone.
"We're not afraid."
While writing an article…
It was so hard to convey
the great pain we were seeing.
Whenever an ambulance passed through, people would clap.
I really wanted to thank the people
for helping us and what they did.
We did everything we could and if I couldn't do better
I apologize, obviously. Right?
To anyone that at that time
cried for us, know that
I will be eternally grateful to you.
I'd never seen my country as united like that day. Never.
Two days later,
Spain was divided like I'd never seen before.
We are committed to fight new threats
like terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and tyrannical regimes.
The role of Spain in the Iraq occupation was very polemical,
it was very controversial,
and it produced large protests in the streets.
It brought to the forefront matters of international politics
for the general public, something that had never happened before.
The interest of the general public in foreign affairs
was very limited.
Instructions were given to pick up and store bag the evidence found
and to send it to IFEMA.
The judge in charge stated in the report
that the evidence was going to be held at the Puente de Vallecas precinct,
we had to go to IFEMA
and bring everything to the Puente de Vallecas precinct.
While doing an inspection and writing
a report of everything that was inside the bag,
a police officer found the device.
I got a call and they told me they had found a bomb
and that they had already called the TEDAX team,
that they had evacuated the precinct.
We took it to a park to be able to deactivate it
more securely and without putting other people at risk,
there we could go slowly,
and we were able to deactivate it.
In the X-ray we could perfectly see
a very long wire that hadn't been properly fitted.
It was like this, which is why it didn't explode.
The backpack contained a phone,
a card and an explosive device.
With this, the police started working
backwards to figure out where the explosive devices came from,
where the phone was bought
and where the card was bought.
Does anyone believe that any sensible government
in Spain after 30 years
of terrorism and after facing an attack like yesterday's
wouldn't logically,
reasonably, believe
that that gang might be behind it?
For some, if it had been ETA,
this would be a victory for the Popular Party,
however, for others if the Islamists had done it,
Islamic terrorists, this would give
the south an advantage in the elections that would take place in three days.
The main line of investigation is still ETA.
Yes, it's still the main line of investigation,
this is what I've been told moments ago
by the security forces and corps, who are in charge of the investigation.
An anonymous call on behalf of ETA
assures that the terrorist organization was not responsible
and it was published by the newspaper Gara.
The White House offered
an interview with the President and the First Lady
at ambassador Javier Rupérez's residence.
The offer was a surprise
due to the nature of the interview,
but it was normal that the White House press called
the Spanish Television correspondents.
I always believed it was
because of the connection, the friendship
between Bush and Aznar.
It was the first time an American president
visited a foreign ambassador in Washington.
Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice were there.
We knew Colin Powell, who had a very high position
in Bush's administration, was coming.
Bush did the interview next to his wife
and afterwards
Lorenzo called me to tell me that Spanish Television
would not broadcast the interview.
At that time, I supposed,
and I still believe it now,
that Spanish Television's director
believed it wasn't timely
to link…
what had happened in Madrid with President Bush
because that led to Iraq.
And what I understood
was that Spanish Television's directors were…
trying to keep going with the government's version,
which was ETA.
Bush held me back and asked if we could talk privately.
He asked me, "Who do you think
is behind this?" And I said, "Well, we believe it's ETA."
Then he told me,
"My intelligence services say
there's a chance it wasn't ETA."
When the President of the United States
says his intelligence services
are finding out that it was someone else, well…
I called Aznar to told him and…
Aznar, I imagine Aznar knew
much more than I did at that moment, right?
He was already aware of the issue since he…
Let's say the rumor mill
had already started in Madrid.
It began with the usual shouts of "No to terrorism…"
but then something starts to come out…
a voice in a…
very spontaneous manner asking who was it.
That question, at that demonstration,
that day, already…
told us that the people didn't believe
the government's version.
It seems like some people
want to dismiss the possibility
that the criminal and murderous organization ETA is behind this.
As the investigation continues,
there is more evidence pointing to Arabs, not ETA.
Specially when they find phone numbers
through one of the phone cards found next to the bombs.
Those numbers were tracked
and it turned out that the phone card
was sold in Lavapies in a store
of an Arab named Jamal Zougam.
Jamal Zougam was a person with a jihadist background.
He was someone who had already been flagged by French intelligence services
for his ties to jihadism.
No Spaniard can be surprised that the priority
is the terrorist organization that's spent 30 years
attacking Spain, and that's caused nearly 900 deaths.
That is the priority.
I haven't heard it's Al-Qaeda from anyone at the security forces and corps
or that the favor an investigative line
regarding that terrorist organization.
The first detentions were of citizens from Maghreb.
Where's ETA?
The head of the NIC had been
excluded from both political and investigative meetings,
and suddenly the government asks him to make a statement
blaming ETA for the attacks,
when the police already had by noon on Saturday the information
of the stores where the phones
used in the attacks had been sold.
I met with Minister Acebes in his office
on Saturday at 4:00 PM and I wasn't told anything.
From Moncloa, I'm being asked to say something
that is obviously going nowhere,
and they already know that the ETA trail has no validity whatsoever
and that the Islamist trail is the valid one.
I felt very bad that day.
I felt very manipulated and that day I wanted…
I wanted to quit. But imagine, if that night,
the day before the elections, I had presented my resignation,
I would've directly caused him to lose the elections,
and that was a burden I didn't want to carry either.
Before the ballots open,
the local cell records a video
with the intent of being able to intervene
in the discussion that had already started
in the media and among Spain's society
regarding who was behind the attacks.
The video was made by one of the terrorists dressed as a woman
because that was what he had nearby. Imagine how desperate
they were feeling, the need they had to say,
"Hey, it was us who killed them, not ETA.
It was us, damn it!"
I think nothing should be dismissed.
The police will continue to work
investigating every possibility.
The Minister of Interior subjected himself
to a dramatic sequence of public appearances
in which the information he provided
was very volatile, and at the same time very contradictory.
It was extremely surprising that someone like Aznar
wasn't capable of stopping that version,
because it was obvious that the opposition
was going to use the ammunition they were giving them.
On the day of reflection,
the Spanish left went out to the streets and criticized the government
harshly and disproportionately.
In Spain, on the 24 hours before an election,
it is forbidden to make any political propaganda.
Many of the meetings taking place in the streets and in front
of the Popular Party headquarters were organized through social media,
which, on top of that,
were still unknown or, at least, their use was very rare.
The complaints started very strong.
There was a demonstration in front of the Popular Party's headquarters,
berating the government despite the fact
that there had been no evidence of culpability from the government.
There is an illegal demonstration
that is also blaming the Popular Party for terrible crimes.
The government was in trouble, the opposition had seen blood
and the chance to change the election outcome unexpectedly.
Spanish citizens deserve a government that doesn't lie to them.
They deserve a government that always speaks the truth.
The government, since the beginning has acted
and continues to act with full transparency.
On Sunday 14th, I went down to vote with my husband and daughter.
Miriam was going to London on Thursday,
so she sent her vote through mail. I asked to be present
to make sure Miriam's vote was counted.
I went to vote.
I went because my boy
wanted to vote, but they didn't let him.
The day of the elections gave the victory, surprisingly, to the opposition party.
I've given orders to have the Spanish troops
posted in Iraq
come home as soon and as safely as possible.
Condoleezza Rice called me to express
her surprise, her shock.
Because they hadn't warned the Americans, they hadn't said anything.
There was this sense that Zapatero
is kind of doing what the terrorists have asked.
He should have waited long enough so that no one
would think that there was a cause-and-effect relationship
between the attacks and the withdrawal.
Choosing March 11 as the day of the attacks in Madrid
had nothing to do with the elections.
It was rather a matter of strategy for the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda.
The first evidence of March 11
having been chosen as the day to attack Madrid
dates back
to October 19, 2003.
An on October 19, 2003,
the general elections hadn't been called yet
in Spain.
There's objective data indicating
that the attacks were fully planned in Belgium, in Brussels.
It's a document to be able to acquire a mobile telephone chip
that would be used by the March 11 network.
In those documents, they put two false dates of birth.
One is replaced by May 16,
the date of the attacks in Casablanca,
and the other one is replaced by March 11,
the day the attacks in Madrid would occur.
Both pieces of information date back to before the elections were called.
Therefore, it's hard to believe that someone was heading
the presidency and knew he would call for an election on March 14.
With all the data that the national police had gathered,
we started to draw the first conclusions
on all the devices that hadn't exploded.
Once we found out where the mobile phones' chips had been bought,
we were able to locate the phones
through the radioelectric network.
And they were near a house we already knew of
which is where the explosives were made, in they are of Morata de Tajuña.
That type of explosive came from mines, especially those located in Asturias.
Conchita Mine is a very rural place,
it was relatively easy to hide big amounts of explosive materials there.
There were explosive cartridges,
which were not at the munitions dump, as they should have been.
All the explosive devices, as well as the rest of the detonators,
and there were many different types, had all come from the same mine.
The other part of the investigation was now to identify
all the people who might have had a role
in allowing the terrorists to have this amount of explosives.
The linking piece was
an individual called Rafa Zouhier,
who knew the perpetrators
and also the people at the mine in Asturias.
And both groups arranged it.
The jihadist cell got their explosives in Asturias
by trading them for hashish, as simple as that.
They took them to Madrid and planned the attacks.
The operation leader of the cell,
when he was driving from Asturias with 200 kg of explosives,
was stopped by the Civil Guard.
They were stopped, identified, and there was nothing against them.
He was fined and he paid in cash.
They didn't search the trunk where all the explosives were.
The car had duplicated plates.
If instead of a traffic patrol car
an antiterrorist control patrol car had been there, he'd been arrested.
There were serious coordination failures
between the Civil Guard, the National Police Corps,
and also of international cooperation.
There were many lines of investigation,
but none of them were concrete.
We knew they had a lot of explosives
and that they would go on killing
while the could.
Some security guards who were patrolling near the AVE rails saw
a suspicious vehicle, with two individuals acting suspiciously
and they called the Civil Guard. The people who were there
noticed the movement and that they had been found out and left.
They cut some of the wire to access the rails
and they tried to plant some explosives there.
12 kilograms of explosives with their detonators had been placed
under the rail and hidden with rocks. As the train passed,
they would've simply had to detonate them manually.
They placed it a few meters away from a bridge.
Had it exploded, it would've been a similar carnage to that of March 11th.
Because of the way the explosive device had been placed,
all the people on the train would have died.
The General Information Precinct already had information
about the possible perpetrators
of the attacks, and they were all from a jihadist cell
that was mainly composed of individuals from Morocco.
At that time the only one that had been to Afghanistan
and had returned to Spain was Said Berraj.
Said Berraj had to have been the one
to teach them how to make the explosives.
We were investigating mainly
all the phone numbers that had been in touch
or had had anything to do with the phones that were used for the bombs.
A point came
when we had a map
that looked like a star with hundreds of points,
here we placed the different phone numbers
owned by people who could have been involved in the attacks.
One of the numbers really caught my eye
because it looked really similar to the batch related to Said Berraj.
I decided to investigate the phone number
and we saw that the last incoming call
was from a Spaniard
that had rented an apartment to some Arabs.
They had given him their foreign number
and the name of Mohamed Belhadj
and… at 3:00 PM…
I called my then boss, my superior…
and told him "I've found the security apartment of the terrorists."
I asked, "Is there someone inside?"
And Rafa says, "Yes, there are people inside."
Abdelmajid Bouchar was one of the people inside the apartment
and he went down to take out the trash.
This person notices the presence of members
of the Central Unit of Foreign Intelligence.
The units are dressed as civilians
and then he leaves the bag in the container.
And he starts running.
The police couldn't stop him at that time because
what we didn't know was that Abdelmajid Bouchar was actually an athlete.
The guys up in the apartment
started shooting from the windows
and for us that was confirmation
that they were the terrorists.
The amount of explosives that they may still have
could be high, very high.
It was likely they had it in the apartment.
One of Morocco's State security forces called me
since they already had the names of the people we were looking for
and obviously the phones had been bugged.
They told me that they had called their families in Morocco
to say goodbye.
He told me they believed they were going to kill themselves.
The area is sealed off
and all the citizen security units are mobilized,
and GEO is sent,
the Special Ops Group,
to carry out the assault or to negotiate the terrorists' surrender.
We proceeded and went up to the first floor
where the place they were living in was.
We put a controlled explosive device on the door.
They started shooting from the inside
and we could hear chanting in Arabic.
The chief of the operation ordered us to throw tear gas inside,
and a short while later we saw Javier,
who was the only one that could see inside through the shield window,
signaled he could see someone
and he was talking to someone inside, and he told him,
"Get out slowly, undress, undress."
The blast wave threw me into the air,
my eardrums were gone, I could barely hear.
When the explosion's movement stopped
and I saw I was fine, I looked up at the building, the assault was over,
everything was about, well, to collapse.
Then we all got to work
to rescue our teammates who had been buried under the rubble.
We also took Javier out,
who was very injured at that moment.
An object cut his leg and he didn't make it.
We found the remains of seven bodies,
completely destroyed.
The leaders of the cell killed themselves there.
They were the ones who put the backpacks in the train
getting on at Alcalá de Henares.
They got on different trains, left the backpacks and got off
at intermediate stations.
The terrorists had started but hadn't finished
a series of attacks they had planned.
They had a house
they had rented very close to Granada.
One of them left a will.
They were counting on the fact
if they weren't detained, their goal was to…
their ultimate goal was to become what they understand as…
a martyr.
The grave of GEO member Torronteras,
who died during the explosion, was desecrated.
The coffin was pulled out, the body was taken out and…
and burnt.
The ones who planned that out…
The ones I asked before…
when, who, and why…
They decided that day, precisely that day…
Well, I don't think they are in far away deserts.
Or that they're in far away mountains.
What do you mean by that?
Your honor, I'm saying what I said,
and if you want to know,
investigate it, your honor.
Don't ask me to take responsibility on that.
I didn't have much information because we weren't part of the investigation.
There were no meetings in which we participated
and in which investigation tasks were assigned or distributed to us.
That's after the 16th.
It doesn't make sense that some common criminals
were able to plan and carry out
the largest terrorist attack in the history of Europe,
and which even toppled a government.
You…
insist time and again in pulling an esoteric link
between ETA and Al-Qaeda not because you care about the truth,
because you care that the people--
what you care about is that the people keep thinking that there is a link,
because that, somehow,
will allow you to keep defending the lies you told between the 11th and the 14th.
You are the ones who cannot live with the circumstances
in which you won.
You don't care about what's on the reports, or the judicial process,
or the data, you don't care about that.
You have the irresistible need,
irresistible, to say the investigation is not being carried out.
Today instead of the president showing up, an agitator has shown up.
What were you laughing about, your honors?
What we're talking about, your honors…
is of the death and permanent injuries
suffered by human beings.
Of losses that have filled us with grief and bitterness.
What happened? What madness took over
this country in that moment? Politics cannot steep that low. It can't.
The 11M commission was only there
so that politicians could throw insults at each other
at the expense of the victims of the 11M. It didn't serve any purpose.
Everything fell apart.
Why? Because there was a change, and a new government came in.
That's the answer.
There was a smearing campaign against the investigative judge,
against the prosecutor.
They wanted, at any cost,
the perpetrators to be the terrorist organization ETA.
A conspiracy theory was created.
Pedro J. Ramírez, from the newspaper El Mundo
along with Federico Jiménez Losantos,
who at that time worked at the COPE,
starts spreading stories
to hoist a flag
saying that it wasn't clear who the perpetrators were.
We ended up turning coincidences
into evidence and putting them on the front page
with a great reach.
Several theories start circulating and they always include
a link with ETA,
with the Spanish secret service
working for the socialist party…
The conservation of the trains
has also been the target of many theories.
The contention point here is to understand either that the trains
are the scene of a crime or that they are evidence for convictions.
The trains are a crime scene that,
after the police has inspected it
and has gathered samples and evidence,
goes back to normal.
They talked a lot about links between ETA members
that had gone to Morocco. Where did they find this information?
Morocco never provided that information to us.
The intelligence services didn't either.
We are in a commercial war. El Mundo has to leave
its right-wing newspaper competition, Diario ABC, on the curbside.
Each time El Mundo published a story like this,
with the support of the COPE,
the sales of El Mundo would go up,
and the sales of ABC would go down.
The efforts to mislead the discussion of who was behind the 11M
is the most transcendental and dirtiest journalistic deceit operation
in the history of Spanish journalism since the transition to democracy.
There isn't even a reasonable margin,
not even to cast doubt…
that some people keep casting with a good intention
that there was possible cooperation between ETA and jihadists.
That cooperation has never existed.
There is absolutely no evidence pointing to any kind of cooperation.
Neither direct nor indirect.
Every attempt at linking the attacks
with the terrorist organization ETA was absolutely fraudulent.
There was nothing.
Since the beginning, everything pointed to a jihadist cell.
A damage was done,
unnecessary, gratuitous, and unfair,
to the people who were just doing their job.
Some journalists,
including Jiménez Losantos, accused me directly
of being responsible for a police scheme…
that had planned the attacks.
That I had been an accomplice of a criminal massacre
and had filled the 11M report with false evidence.
My wife, my children…
tried to act normal around me, but…
They were carrying their suffering deep inside
and, in fact, unfortunately, well…
The consequences were lethal.
To understand what happened on March 11th, 2004 in Madrid,
we have to go back ten years…
to 1994.
That was the year when an Al-Qaeda cell
was formed in Spain.
The Al-Qaeda cell in Spain was formed by people who had military experience
with the Muslim Brotherhood that had fled Syria.
They left an influential leader in their place,
and it was Abu Dahdah.
A real cell begins to form around Abu Dahdah.
They get married to Spanish women
so they can get the citizenship quickly and their only way of life
is to prepare for the jihad.
This cell carried out
financing, radicalization, and recruiting.
Abu Dahdah travelled
at least 10 or 12 times a year with the money
they had collected in mosques in Madrid
to give it directly to Abu Qutada in London.
Two months before September 11,
someone, possibly from Afghanistan,
told Abu Dahdah that they had entered the aviation field.
The call was in Arabic, so we asked the translator,
"What do they mean by aviation field?
Do they mean they're in an airfield?"
But the translator would say,
"No, it means that they have started to work in the field of aviation."
The Hamburg cell, led by Mohamed Atta,
had been in touch with the Spanish Al-Qaeda cell
led by Abu Dahdah.
We went to see a judge, we said, "We believe
that the cell has somehow participated or knew about it beforehand.
And… I think we should stop them."
The Dátil operation
that dismantled the Spanish Al-Qaeda cell was the most important operation
against Al-Qaeda carried out in Western Europe
since the 9/11 attacks.
Most of Abu Dahdah's cell members are detained,
including their leader.
However, not all the members of the cell are detained.
Amer Azizi, originally from Morocco
and a resident from Madrid,
was Abu Dahdah's right hand man in the Spanish Al-Qaeda cell.
He was going to be detained that day when Operation Dátil happened.
But what we didn't know is that he wasn't there.
Later on, we found out he had left to Afghanistan.
He decided to plot revenge against Spain
because of the operation that had dismantled
Abu Dahdah's cell
that he had belonged to until November 2001.
Amer Azizi, from Pakistan, started
to give orders so that the remaining members of Abu Dahdah's cell
that hadn't been detained would start to meet and create a new cell.
Amer Azizi takes that decision in December 2001
accompanied by a well-known operative
of the Islamic group fighting in Libya.
Throughout this process…
of planification… Amer Azizi
becomes part of central Al-Qaeda.
He begins to climb the ranks
inside the Al-Qaeda organization.
He's appointed by Osama Bin Laden himself
as Al-Qaeda's external operations deputy chief.
Amer Azizi manages
to have his plans to carry out a terrorist attack in Spain
approved by Al-Qaeda's leaders themselves
through their external operations command.
In the 11M terrorist network, there are three main components.
First, what was left of Abu Dahdah's cell.
The second component is provided by the Islamic fighting group from Morocco
through their Western Europe network.
And the third component
is formed by the common criminals turned jihadists
that joined in the summer of 2003.
Thus it would be a great mistake
to reduce the March 11 network
to a small group of criminals radicalized by the Iraq War.
The trial lasted over six months, it had over 600 witnesses,
over 90 expert witnesses, 52 lawyers.
It was a sentence that was studying in depth
every allegation of each of the parties.
The defendants were not all accused of the same thing.
We had a main group that was being accused of having strictly committed the attacks.
Others were accused of belonging to one of the cells.
Others were accused of collaborating, others of falsifying documents,
and others of having provided the explosives.
In the end, it ended up being a technically complicated trial.
The big question was who was the mastermind
and why were the attacks in Madrid planned?
What was the reason?
At the trial, they weren't able to determine
why there wasn't a clear mastermind
behind the attacks on March 11.
We had a warrant for his search and arrest
regarding his ties to the Madrid cell.
We weren't able to figure out where he was.
Of course we couldn't locate him,
and thus we weren't able to prosecute him at that time.
We got information that an American drone had struck
a meeting attended by high-ranking leaders of Al-Qaeda
and that when they checked the rubble,
they found Amer Azizi.
When Amer Azizi died,
the missing piece to figure out
how the 2004 attacks in Madrid were planned
was given by a document from US authorities,
where they detailed how Azizi had died and whom he was with.
This information was provided by the United Sates intelligence services
to Spanish authorities
in September 2006.
And again, a more detailed briefing on Amer Azizi
and his role in jihadist activities
in Spain on March 11th
was again provided in September 2007.
Azizi's relevance was not understood
until he was killed, along with his boss Hamza Rabia,
discrediting the theory that the 11M cell
was composed of radicals inspired
by the words of Osama Bin Laden
that wanted to contribute to his fight without having any connection to him.
If this had been known at the time the trial took place,
the final conclusion would have been different.
Azizi is the key piece of the puzzle
that allows us to understand everything that has happened
and understand the reason and meaning of the attacks.
The government didn't have enough empathy
for the shock Spain's society was going through.
If I had been the president of the government at that time,
the first thing I would've done is go to Atocha.
If Aznar had summoned
the leaders of each political party to Moncloa…
Maybe in an act of condemnation and solidarity…
Spain is being attacked.
We are all together,
and we're going to face this together.
Whomever the perpetrator is,
they're not confronting the government. They're confronting the country
and all its political forces.
This picture didn't come about.
We would've all understood,
and we wouldn't feel like
we were deceived.
If at that time the president had asked all the citizens to remain calm
that democracy shall remain victorious,
and that in two days there's an electoral date, and that they can vote as they like
as long as everyone goes to vote, he would've crushingly won the election.
It's a sad date, it's a date that had a very negative impact
on the political and social evolution of Spain, no doubt.
When we talk about 11M…
we almost forget that we're talking about the dead.
The victims have shown me the best part of human beings.
Gratefulness.
Respect and understanding.
It's something that you learn to live with. But you never forget.
When someone dies,
they keep on living in other people's memories, but it's very hard.
We really miss them.
I don't want to…
revictimize myself, I am a survivor and that's how I see myself.
I'd like to believe something like this won't ever happen again,
but of course what we must not do is forget.