| Europe creates a new security and assistance service for the population Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar will testify in early October to the parliamentary commission investigating the terrorist attacks on March 11 this year on commuter trains heading to Madrid. The decision on this was made yesterday by members of the parliamentary commission headed by deputy Paulino Rivera. The commission began work in July, has already heard from 38 people and plans to sum up the results by Christmas. There are 15 more people to be interviewed. Among them is Jose Maria Aznar.
On March 11 this year, when 191 people died in Madrid, Aznar led the Spanish government. Immediately after the bombings - three days before general elections and a cabinet change - he tried to blame the Basque terrorist organization ETA. Aznar even called the editors of leading Spanish newspapers, demanding that this version be reflected. However, al-Qaeda terrorists claimed responsibility for the explosions, declaring it to be revenge for the participation of the Spaniards in the war against Iraq. This undermined the electoral chances of Mariano Rajoy, Aznar's successor. The victory was won by socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who immediately fulfilled his election promise and withdrew 1,300 Spanish soldiers from Iraq.
In March, Jose Maria Aznar promised to leave politics and devote himself to his memoirs and teaching at Georgetown University in the United States. Now he will be the first Spanish ex-prime minister forced to testify in parliament. (In this he will follow his friend, President Bush, who testified before the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States). The former Prime Minister of Spain will be asked about the anti-terrorism measures taken by the authorities, who probably knew about possible retaliatory strikes in connection with the presence of their troops in Iraq.
Aznar's summons to a parliamentary commission is clearly political in nature. To clarify the circumstances of the March 11 tragedy, his testimony will not play a special role. The investigation is almost over, 68 people have been arrested, most of them Moroccans. Seven more organizers of the terrorist attack blew themselves up in the Madrid suburb of Leganes in early April when Spanish special forces tried to arrest them. The investigation considers all of them members of a radical group associated with Al-Qaeda. The capital's newspaper El Mundo, however, on Tuesday put forward a version that Moroccan intelligence services were involved in the terrorist attacks in Madrid - Rabat had bad relations with Aznar. But this version is unproven.
Ten Pakistani nationals were arrested yesterday in Barcelona. They were involved in criminal activities, but the intelligence services believe that from the proceeds of the criminal business they financed Islamic fundamentalists outside Spain. The arrest in Barcelona coincided with the arrival of the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy and General Security, Javier Solana, in this city. He presented a report on the revision of security systems in Europe. It focuses not on the fight against terrorists in Europe, but on the protection of ordinary people: “This service will not protect the state, but citizens.” For this purpose, it is proposed to create a special European force to respond to threats to public security. A third of the 15,000 personnel will be civilian specialists. According to the authors, these people will be engaged in ensuring law and order, helping citizens in emergency situations and, if possible, preventing terrorist attacks. Some will be allowed to use weapons. Andrey ZLOBIN, Ivan GORBUNOV |
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