| The winner of the vote in Spain will only be determined today Yesterday's parliamentary elections in Spain, marred the day before by bloody terrorist attacks, determined the name of the new chairman of the government, since the leader of the winning party becomes prime minister in this country. Official data will only be available today, and preliminary results, summed up late yesterday evening by independent agencies, were full of contradictions. Some said that the People's Party and its new leader, 48-year-old Mariano Rajoy, who replaced his fellow party member and, in any case, leaving the post of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, won. He led the Spanish government for eight years, but this time did not participate in the election race.
Running neck and neck with the People's Party, according to polls as of yesterday evening, was the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) with its leader, 43-year-old José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Whatever the outcome, the unexpected success of the socialists is explained by the fact that the past three days have cast a shadow on the political reputation of outgoing Prime Minister Aznar. The position of his party, which has always supported the war in Iraq, has been shaken. After all, just yesterday, most experts came to the conclusion that behind the terrorist attacks in Madrid on Thursday was not the Basque separatist organization ETA, but the international octopus Al-Qaeda.
Another important thing is how timely and truthfully the authorities inform the population about the organizers of terrorist attacks and their true motives. Already yesterday afternoon it became clear that the tragedy had sharply increased voter turnout: the figures were noticeably higher than those of four years ago, when about 56% of those eligible to vote came to the polls.
The fact is that immediately after the explosions in trains, literally in the first half hour, Aznar’s government hastily and without a shadow of a doubt announced that the terrorist attack was carried out by the Basque terrorist group ETA, although there was no evidence of this. It is clear why Aznar needed this. Three days before the election, polls showed that the People's Party was ahead of the Socialists by only 6.2% and was unlikely to win an absolute majority of seats in parliament. Admitting 72 hours before polls opened that the Madrid bombings were carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists meant jeopardizing the outcome of the elections. In this case, the terrorist attack seemed to be revenge on the Aznar government, which unconditionally supported the United States in the war against Saddam Hussein, although the majority of Spaniards opposed the war. Therefore, as analysts in Spain note, during an emergency meeting of the crisis cabinet, created immediately after the explosions last Friday, it was decided to blame the Basque terrorists. And only then, after the elections, gradually admit that a mistake has occurred, ETA has nothing to do with it, and there is an Islamic trace in the terrorist attacks.
That is why, hot on the heels, all members of the Spanish government began to speak with one voice about ETA’s involvement in the explosion. And the country's Foreign Ministry instructed its ambassadors to voice this version abroad: that the explosions in Madrid were organized by Basque separatists, just a few hours after the terrorist attack, Spanish Ambassador Jose Maria Robles Fraga said in Moscow.
But the version of ETA's involvement in the bombings began to fall apart even before the elections. The editors of the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, published in London, received a letter sent by e-mail from the Abu al-Hafs al-Misri Brigades group. These "Brigades" are considered to be associated with Al-Qaeda, they already claimed responsibility for bombings in Istanbul last fall. The message said that the “Brigades” had struck Spain, “an ally of the United States and a participant in the crusade against Islam.” In the city of Alcala de Henares, from where the exploded trains departed for Madrid, Spanish police discovered a van with detonators and an audio cassette with excerpts from the Koran. And not far from a mosque in Madrid, the police were planted with a videotape in which a man who introduced himself as “the military representative of al-Qaeda in Europe,” in Arabic with a Moroccan accent, took responsibility for the terrorist attack. In addition, the police found a mobile phone in one of the unexploded bombs on the trains - it was supposed to be the detonator of the explosion. The settings and screensaver of this phone were in Arabic.
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Representatives of the ETA group, through the Gara newspaper published in the Basque Country, several times declared their non-involvement in the terrorist attacks. The population trusted the Basques more than the government. On the night before the elections, rallies were held in front of the People's Party offices under the slogan “We want to know the truth before we vote.” According to the socialists, it was precisely thanks to the pressure of citizens that the investigation took a turn. Yesterday - that is, on voting day - the head of the Spanish Ministry of Internal Affairs, Angel Acebes, admitted that three people from Morocco and two from India were detained in Madrid on suspicion of involvement in organizing a terrorist attack. One of the arrested Moroccans may be involved in organizing an attack last year on a Spanish club in the city of Casablanca in Morocco that killed 40 people. Last night, information emerged that another detained Moroccan was involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
Just on election day, the victims were buried in Spain. There are 199 of them - the last victim was a seven-month-old girl, Patricia, the bodies of her dead parents have not yet been identified. 252 people are in hospitals in the capital, of which about 50 patients are in very serious condition. The bodies of 32 dead foreigners have been identified. There are no Russian citizens among them. This tragedy already has “indirect” victims. On Saturday, in the city of Pamplona in the Basque Country, a policeman shot and killed a shop owner because he refused to hang mourning ribbons over the entrance in memory of the victims of the explosions. It turned out that the son of the murdered man was in a Spanish prison for belonging to ETA.
On Friday, 14 million people came out to demonstrate against terrorism in Spain. 2 million Spaniards walked silently through the pouring rain through the streets of Madrid. Crown Prince Felipe and his sisters Elena and Cristina, and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar walked in the same column. Walking alongside the Spaniards were the specially arrived Prime Ministers of France and Italy, Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Silvio Berlusconi, and Chairman of the European Commission Romano Prodi. Dmitry VLADIMIROV, Madrid, Andrey ZLOBIN |
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