Without knowing who the intellectual authors were, the Atocha attacks in Madrid expire after 20 years

Three years after March 11, 2004, when ten bombs exploded on four trains in Madrid caused the death of 192 people and injured almost two thousand people. there was a trial. It lasted four and a half months and issued a sentence of 200 volumes. He convicted 21 of the 28 defendants which, together with the sentences, represented more than 120,500 years in prison. However, that historical judgment was never determined by word of mouth Who did the order come from? of having placed explosives on trains full of passengers heading to Madrid.

This Monday, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the largest terrorist attack in Spain – and Europe -, precludes any possibility of continuing to investigate the attack.

Because according to the Spanish penal code of two decades ago, every crime of terrorism prescribed after 20 years.

“It is not known who the intellectual authors of the jihadist attack were”, one of the associations of 11M victims has maintained for years. If nothing changes, on March 11, 2024 the crimes committed will become statute-barred and those responsible will come exempt from any type of punishment.“

But for the majority it is an association that brings together the survivors of the attack and the relatives of those who died there -Association 11-M hit by terrorism– support non-prescription is to continue fueling conspiracy theories on those responsible for the explosions in Madrid.

“There are claims before and after the attacks about jihadist responsibility,” he says Clarion Eulogio Paz, president of the 11-M Association and father of Daniel, a 20-year-old student who died that morning on the train that took him to university.

“The trial specifies that the perpetrator is a jihadist cell. Does anyone want to ask me not to prescribe? I don’t care if he prescribes it or not – confesses Eulogio -. There have been as many conspiracy theories as there are people. What we stick to are the proven facts. The proven facts say so It was a jihadist cell and that’s it.”.

Today they remain in prison only three of those convicted for the attack. Jamal Zougam, the Moroccan citizen who planted the last explosive on the train that left Alcalá at 7:14 and exploded at 7:38. Otman el Gnaoui, also Moroccan, who transported the explosives from Asturias, and the Asturian miner Emilio Suárez Trashorras, who sold them to him.

The lie that aimed at ETA

Twenty years ago, on March 11, Spain was governed by José María Aznar, of the People’s Party, who had smoked a cigar with his feet on the desk with the then president of the United States, George W. Bush, at the summit of G8. 2002 in Canada and, a year later, welcomed the US intervention in Iraq.

When in March 2004 ten bombs exploded in Madrid, Aznar chose to blame the terrorist group ETA.

“We all know that this mass murder is not the first time it has been attempted,” Aznar said. referring to the Basque group and supported by some media who repeated what Aznar wanted to hear.

“I do not believe that the intellectual authors of these attacks are in very remote deserts or in very distant mountains,” the president of the Spanish government then stated, rejecting the indications and authorized opinions that decoded the modus operandi of the tragedy. typical of Islamic terrorism.

But There were three days left until the general elections in Spain and, according to the political interpretation that the Popular Party made of the attack, the electoral result would have been favorable to them if the assassins were active in ETA. Because attributing responsibility for the massacre to jihadist fundamentalists meant giving up thousands of votes to the Socialist Party, which had based its campaign on “no to the war in Iraq”.

Sunday 14 March 2004, the PSOE won the elections and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero assumed the presidency.

The conspiracies, however, They had no end.

A broken phone from versions

On the same day as the attack, a van with bomb-detonating material was seized in Alcalá de Henares. They also found a cassette tape from a musical group, the Orquesta Mondragón, which, like a broken telephone, was interpreted as a membership card for the Mondragón Corporation, a group of cooperatives in Guipúzcoa, in the Basque Country. Another point to pull the thread that linked the attack to ETA.

Furthermore, the discovery of one of the explosives that did not explode allowed investigators to decode the DNA of the attacks. They thus arrived at an apartment in the Leganés neighborhood where seven terrorists were taking refuge who, seeing themselves surrounded by the police, they sacrificed themselves.

“Among those who continued to think that it was ETA, it was also said that the Guardia Civil had brought the frozen bodies and that they had placed them there to make people believe they were jihadists,” he says Clarion Eulogio Paz.

Aznar continues to defend himself

“No official document has ever reached the hands of the Government. to definitively exclude the paternity of ETA and affirm jihadist responsibility without hesitation,” said former president José María Aznar on Monday through the Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies (FAES) which he chairs. He was already presiding over it in 2004, when the attacks occurred.

Eulogio Paz recalls: “Shortly before, at the beginning of 2003, the FAES, the PP foundation chaired by Aznar, had said: ‘We can expect a worsening of the terrorist threat if war breaks out against Iraq, a threat that it will preferably be of interest to the countries that participate in it’ – Paz review – How is it possible that, knowing this, Aznar, in an irresponsible way, lowered his guard against Islamic terrorism?”

Prescription yes or no?

“From different sectors they insist on the idea that the 11M sentence was incomplete because he was not identified, nor obviously he was convicted, the so-called ‘intellectual authors’, who would enjoy impunity while waiting for the crimes to expire. But neither then nor now has the slightest indication of the existence of such authors been provided, says the lawyer of the 11-M Association, Antonio García Martín.

The lawyer explains that in 2004, when the attacks occurred, “the law in force at the time established a 20-year statute of limitations for terrorist crimes.”

“In December 2010 the amendment to the Criminal Code came into force which established the imprescriptibility of terrorist crimes – adds García Martín -. But the Spanish Constitution and international treaties prohibit the retroactivity of the law.”

“Moreover, the concept of ‘intellectual paternity’ does not exist in the Spanish penal code,” adds Eulogio, who the loss of his son Daniel has transformed into almost a specialist in Spanish and international law.

-Despite prescribing the crime of terrorism, the trial establishes that the attack was committed by a jihadist cell. Does knowing this bring relief from the pain of your child’s death?

-NO. I don’t know who the specific person is that killed Daniel. During the trial I asked for a life sentence for whoever killed Daniele. Obviously the law of the Spanish state is what it is and no matter how much they sentence someone to 40 thousand years, the maximum they will be in prison is 40.