He looked for the good in people.
Not what they have, their status, if they have a nice tracksuit.
He didn't criticize anybody,
so I'd think, "You're as nice as you are dumb."
It makes me mad.
The smell after playing football.
He left his shirt in and and he's like,
"Oh, what detergent does your mom use?"
I was going home from work. I heard the news on the radio.
I got really nervous.
A huge overwhelming sensation
and seeing hour after hour go by
and…the only person no one had heard from was Dani.
The taxi driver was crying with us.
I kept thinking that Dani was helping the victims.
I got home, my father was crying.
I didn't understand. I told him, "Hey, it's fine. Everything's fine, Dad."
"Everything's fine."
And… and I got the call, them not being able to find Dani.
But I had talked to him, so it couldn't be,
and I was saying that he was going to show up
and I'd give him a hug, because I wanted to see him so badly.
And he never showed up.
Up until March 10th, 2004,
I was a normal person. I had a job. I think I was happy.
I was able to send both my children to college.
I was working in research on new drugs to treat cancer.
I was a commander in the terrestrial army.
I worked as an electrician and as a 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 for the commuter train network in Madrid.
Back then, besides working as a civil servant, I drove a taxi.
I worked 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 guy who's 19 or 20.
I found out I was pregnant. I was happy.
There was nothing that made me feel
that day would be different from any other day.
A regular work 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 a newspaper that day. Because Real Madrid won the day before.
When he said goodbye, his mother said,
"Will you kiss me goodbye, son?"
As he was walking down the hallway,
I had this feeling.
I thought, "Don't leave."
I saw the train pulling away and I just ran to catch it.
And I caught it.
When the doors closed, we heard this huge noise.
We all fell to the ground and smoke came out.
I managed to get out of the train.
I looked to my right,
and to my surprise I saw a blown-up train car.
I was on the platform
and the train to my left, the one I'd just gotten off from, exploded.
The only thought I had was to get out.
Get out, no matter what.
There's no cowardice in that situation.
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 tracks on my right.
Then a third bomb exploded, and it all went black.
The third explosion was the one that hit us.
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 terror.
Things I think no one should see.
I always sat in the same train car.
Usually in the same seat next to the window.
I remember the "beep-beep" sound the doors made when they closed.
I started the train.
I didn't hear any noise. I saw 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? What is this?"
"It's a bomb. It's a bomb."
That's all I remember.
I saw through the rear-view mirror…
the explosion of the second… the second bomb.
That image, I have it…
It's impossible to forget.
With that huge noise from the blast,
it's almost like you're deaf.
My hearing was like listening to someone when your head is underwater.
That was my hearing.
I saw things that…
That were really hard.
The first thing I felt was a lot of light spinning around
and I lost control of my body.
I tried to sit up, but I couldn't.
We went back in to help get people out.
While we're helping,
the fifth train car exploded.
I don't remember anything about that blast.
Uh…
"Lord, protect me."
"Me and my family."
At that moment, everything turned black.
A train is torn apart by three explosions.
It's the latest on the terror attacks on commuter trains in Madrid.
Officials are now checking local hospitals in Madrid
to see if Britons are amongst the dead and injured.
Katya, describe the scene to us.
As you can see behind me,
uh, a number of emergency services all around Atocha station…
It wasn't just the people who were surviving or relatives.
It was the people who were first-hand on the platform in bits, absolute bits.
It was such a powerful human story.
Once we got there we realized the magnitude of the tragedy.
First we all looked at each other and we asked ourselves, "What is this?"
"Where do we begin?"
Everything was silent.
It was dead silence. You could only hear cell phones.
When I woke up, I knew I was on the train, but I couldn't see it anywhere.
I was suddenly in the seat that the woman next to me was in.
To my surprise, I realized I no longer had my pants on. Or my shoes.
The people who were in front of me,
who were right above the bomb, were completely torn apart.
My legs were cut off at the knees.
I tried to get up. That's when I realized that my legs…
I couldn't get up because they were completely torn apart.
I was in so much pain.
It was as if my whole body had been torn. So much pain.
We started to do something that we call triage.
We do it to find out who needs medical attention first,
depending on their injuries,
and who's least likely to survive.
I was helping someone and my partner,
she asked, "What can I do? What can I do?"
And the paramedic who was helping the victim
told her, "Help him die in peace."
"Help him die peacefully."
Uh…My partner, well,
she held his hand
and simply just waited for him to die.
The firemen arrived
and we asked them to cut the doors off the trains
so we could use them as stretchers.
The windows in nearby houses had shattered.
People were throwing blankets to us through the open windows.
A friend of hers called me. All she said was, "Bomb at Atocha."
I had my phone right here. I grabbed it and I called my mother.
He said, "Mom, there was an explosion."
He said, "Mommy come. Come, Mommy."
"Dad! Dad!"
"There was an explosion and my arm is broken."
And then the call cut off.
So I went to the school
to check and see if she had come there, they said she hadn't.
I woke up that morning
and thought I'd call him to say happy birthday.
"Today's his birthday, and I should be first, I'm his mother."
One of the answers to the calls was,
"We can't find your sister."
When I called, it was ringing,
but no one picked up.
Since we were undocumented,
we didn't want the police to start asking us questions.
I held on to that woman, and was asking her to help me.
I told her I had to leave that place because I didn't want to be deported.
She said, "How can you leave if you can't even walk?"
I was covered in blood.
I didn't have papers at the time
and I said that the police are going to catch us because we don't have…
I remember a boy next to me who was dead.
Very young.
One man came onto the train and saw a finger that was moving.
He had a wound in his chest.
I saw it and all I could do was put my hand there.
I put my hand inside him.
With his hand there…
I lost less blood.
In Spain, we felt the constant threat of domestic terrorism.
The terrorism carried out by ETA.
ETA was a terrorist group which, uh, started a violent campaign
at the end of the 1960s in a bid to gain independence
for the Basque region, which claimed over 800 lives.
For decades, terrorism had to do with ETA.
In Spain, it's so deeply ingrained in the psyche of the population there.
Two weeks before, some ETA members were caught.
They came to Madrid with a truck full of explosives.
They were targeting something big, but no one knew what it was.
It's clear. ETA has tried to wreck democracy.
It was a Thursday.
And the general election was going to be on Sunday.
VOTE PP VOTE PSOE
And so, there was the possibility
that this would directly impact the election.
Terrorists must know
that any government will give them the same answer.
And 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.
The government of Aznar had really clamped down on ETA,
had been very successful in fighting ETA.
ETA was very weak at that time.
Electorally speaking, this was a strength
for the Partido Popular and for Aznar going into that election.
Once the victims that need medical attention
are taken away from the area,
the crime scene is secured.
And then we begin investigating the scene
examining and carefully removing all evidence.
Suddenly, we can hear people screaming, "There's another bomb!"
And there was a deep emotional struggle.
The guys from TEDAX told us we had to leave immediately.
We had to make sure there weren't any victims who were still alive.
The firefighters, they left.
And we stayed there.
Uh…
Because some people were still alive.
My partner heard a noise, heard a moan,
and he said, "We need to keep looking."
There was a girl screaming inside, but what we heard was so quiet.
And we found another person
underneath several bodies.
They saw me, they saw that I… That I was breathing
and I remember they said, "This one's alive! She's alive!"
My first instinct was to grab her hand.
And when she grabbed mine,
I remember she held it very tight, like she was 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 was at El Pozo station,
and was safely deactivated.
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 very difficult.
I was obsessed with looking everywhere, in every corner,
so we wouldn't miss anything.
We looked underneath the rails
and by following the blast wave, I told one firefighter,
"Let's go up to the roof in case there's anything there."
And it turned out there was a dead body on the roof.
An incident infinitely more painful
considering how much emotion we were all feeling.
The wounds were different.
It wasn't a war, these weren't soldiers, and there were so many.
I'd never seen a clinical chart written on a stomach with a marker.
The patients arrived completely disoriented.
Most of them were deaf.
I had a burst vertebra.
I was missing a piece of my forehead and nose.
I had tubes coming out of everywhere.
The only thing that I was thinking was, "I 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 my leg had to be amputated.
I didn't care. I was alive.
The wave from the blast had cut my elbow.
The doctor recommended cutting off his arm, amputating his left arm.
My husband showed me a picture of my kids,
because I couldn't remember I had any kids.
When I woke up…
they were there.
My husband, my parents, my family.
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,
I told him it wasn't ETA.
He said, "What are you saying?" I said, "No, it wasn't them."
He told me it wasn't ETA's MO.
"I can tell you at this moment,
ETA doesn't have enough people to carry out an attack of this size."
Thirteen bombs on four trains, totally synchronized.
It didn't seem like ETA.
The abertzale left is not even considering as a hypothesis
that ETA is behind what happened today in Madrid.
The government convened an emergency cabinet,
and to our surprise, we found out
that the people who were called to participate in the cabinet
were people who had no experience at all with security or investigations
and had more to do with the Popular Party.
And what's worse, the Director of the National Intelligence Service
wasn't 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 was at the Moncloa, and was led by the president of the government,
and another at the Ministry of the Interior,
led by Minister Acebes.
I wasn't invited to either.
There was a meeting with police higherups
between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m. at the Ministry of the Interior.
One of the police commanders
called the commander in charge of TEDAX who was working one of the attack sites
to ask 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 up and down that it was the other that made the mistake.
Santiago Cuadro says he never said Titadine
and Díaz-Pintado says he heard Titadine.
So that's what he reported to the rest of the police commanders
and what he later reported to the minister.
We were told that morning that it was Titadine,
and not Goma-2 ECO, which is what actually blew up.
Titadine was ETA's typical weapon.
The use of Titadine was a rumor
that spread in the 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 of the explosive.
And Titadine is a brand.
President of the government José María Aznar
called the editors of all the biggest newspapers
to tell them the government was certain that that ETA was behind the attacks.
We received a phone call directly from the president of the government.
He told us
that the most likely hypothesis they were going with
was that the terrorist organization ETA was behind the attack.
The president of the government, without any doubt,
considered those responsible for the attacks to be ETA.
I was very aware of what was going on with my Spanish colleagues.
They were texting me.
I got a text from someone who said they'd been called by Aznar.
I heard other people were called.
It was like, "A prime minister calling people?"
This pressure coming from the government to say something
before evidence was coming out from the police.
The newspaper had just gone to press
with the front page headline,
"Terrorist Carnage in Madrid."
And after Aznar's call,
I changed the headline
to "ETA Carnage in Madrid."
How could we not trust the word of the president of the government?
The police, due to the MO, didn't consider 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,
the Ministry of the 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 TV 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 public broadcaster, RTVE, was controlled by the national government.
At the time that was the government of Aznar.
The news was very much following
the government line in terms of who had carried this out,
and the information the government was giving out
was not necessarily challenged as much as it should have been.
The government called on the United Nations
to release a statement condemning the attacks.
The Security Council was asked repeatedly to condemn the attacks.
And then the government insisted
that a statement of condemnation wasn't enough.
It had to say that the attacks had been organized by ETA.
POLICE - DO NOT CROSS
The Renault Kangoo was found around noon
and people from the Provincial Information Brigade showed up.
They said that the Renault Kangoo didn't match with the evidence you'd see
in a vehicle owned by ETA.
When we found the van,
there were still some explosives inside.
And it was determined they were made from 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 other 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 our main line of investigation,
the one the police and the national guard was considering as essential,
was that of the terrorist group ETA.
We stand strong with the people of Spain.
I appreciate very much the Spanish government's fight against terror,
their resolute stand against terrorist organizations like the 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.
It was al-Qaeda claiming responsibility for this attack.
The fingerprint was there.
Al-Qaeda justifies the attacks
as part of old unsettled debts in what they call the Spanish crusade.
A short while ago, I had a word with Spain's foreign minister, Ana Palacio.
And I asked her why her government was so certain that ETA was to blame.
Some people were of the view that there were
certain characteristics of this attack which were indeed not like ETA.
The fact that there was no warning and the fact that
there were other factors involved which were unfamiliar
in terms of the way ETA operates.
Everything indicates that it is ETA.
ETA is behind this terrorist attack.
ETA was trying to perpetrate the mass terrorist attack in Madrid.
If the Spanish government comes out so strongly,
this is a Western European democracy
and you don't assume that they lie to their own people on such a big thing.
It was very painful to see that the fact that people died
was slowly fading away.
The dead bodies were taken to Pavilion 6 at IFEMA.
At that point, the autopsies began.
There were many families who didn't know their relative was dead.
They hoped to find them at the hospital with the unidentified wounded.
Everyone who went up to me and asked me if I needed anything,
I'd tell them, "Look for my boy."
I kept thinking my son would show up any minute.
It was past 11:00.
It was past 12:00.
All night without knowing anything. Anything.
I said 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…
That their relative was dead.
And we'd go with them to identify the body.
It looked like they had found Daniel's body.
Mmm, they had to do a DNA test to identify him.
I remember saying just one thing.
"Please, even if it's a lie,
swear to me that my son didn't suffer."
The police told me they needed to see a picture.
And I told them it was my daughter.
My husband went in
to identify someone, thinking it's his daughter.
He said it wasn't.
It was his daughter.
It's the hardest thing
any father or mother could go through.
I was stubborn about being one of those who had to go in.
And I went in.
And there she was.
Until that day
she was here.
It may be a bitterly cold evening at Celtic Park,
but nothing can disguise the genuine emotion
as the Celtic supporters, in their unique way,
pay tribute and offer condolences in song.
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 kept telling me, "Don't worry, we're going to help you."
There were people who were still alive, but they…
They didn't have a chance.
I never imagined just a regular person could do something like that.
In that moment, some people did things they would never normally do.
I thought they'd leave. But when I said, "Let's look inside,"
eight or ten people went and they stayed until the end.
The lines to donate blood were endless.
The taxi driver told me I didn't have to pay him, and wished me luck.
Everyone showed up. Everyone.
Somebody had written in white paint,
"We're not afraid."
I was writing the article,
and it was so hard to convey
the great pain we were seeing, in words.
Whenever an ambulance passed, people would clap.
I really wanted to thank people for helping us and for what they did.
We did everything we could and if I couldn't do better
I apologize, obviously.
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, I'd never seen Spain so divided.
Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort, no effort,
to disarm as required by the international community.
Saddam Hussein will stop at nothing
until something stops him.
On 16th March, 2003,
President Bush met with Spanish and British leaders in the Azores
to make the final decision to go to war in Iraq.
George Bush was desperate to find someone to enter this war with him
and Spain was one of the few who was willing to do that.
We are committed to fight new threats
like terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and tyrannical regimes.
With Saddam remaining,
armed with weapons of mass destruction, more discussion is just more delay.
Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction
are a threat to the security of free nations.
American and coalition forces
are in the early stages of military operations
to disarm Iraq, to free its people
and to defend the world from grave danger.
The role of Spain in the Iraq occupation
was very contentious.
OUR GOVERNMENT IS OUR ENEMY
It was controversial and it sparked large protests in the streets.
NO TO WAR
It brought international politics to the forefront of public consciousness,
something that had never happened before.
The general public's interest in foreign affairs was very limited.
I understand the people saying, "What? Why? Why?"
This is the new responsibility for Spain.
Policy that promotes freedom,
that promotes democracy, that promotes prosperity
between the two more important democracies in the world,
the United States and the United Kingdom.
It's a good place.
No, no, personally for me.
That as well, but for my country.
The Bush administration proclaimed "mission accomplished"
and it was a pretty messy mission accomplished
if the largest attack in European history
could be carried out by al-Qaeda.
They were given instructions to bag and catalogue the evidence found
and to send it to IFEMA.
The judge in charge said in the report
that the evidence was going to be held at the Puente de Vallecas precinct,
so we had to go to IFEMA
and bring the bags 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.
They called and said they found a bomb,
and they had already called the TEDAX team,
and they evacuated the precinct.
We took it to a park to be able to deactivate it more securely
and without putting people at risk.
We were able to proceed more carefully,
and successfully deactivated it.
In the X-ray
we could clearly see a long wire that wasn't properly fitted.
It was like this, that's why it didn't explode.
The backpack contained a phone,
a SIM card and an explosive device.
With this, the police started working backwards
to figure out where the explosives came from,
where they bought the phone
and where they bought the SIM card.
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?
The idea that this attack
might have been carried out by jihadists
was seen as potentially extremely damaging to Aznar.
Because he had supported the invasion of Iraq
and the majority of Spaniards had opposed that.
For some, if it had been ETA, it'd mean a victory for the Popular Party,
but for others, if the Muslims had done it,
Islamic terrorists, they'd have the advantage
and would win the election that was three days away.
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.
I said to the news editor,
"I'm beginning to think
that in fact they want to keep this going until the election is over,
because if they don't,
they know that they stand
a very good chance of losing the election."
A short time ago, the Spanish Interior Minister
blamed the Basque separatist group, ETA.
However, ETA has condemned the attacks and said it's not responsible.
An anonymous call on behalf of ETA assured us they weren't responsible
and that 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 because of the nature of the interview.
It wasn't unusual that the White House press
called the… the Spanish television correspondents.
But 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.
Mr. Ambassador, thank you for having Laura and me here.
During this solemn occasion.
Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice were there.
We knew that Colin Powell, who had a very high position
in Bush's administration, was coming.
My first reaction is my heart breaks for those who…
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 believed, and I still believe it now,
that it simply seemed like the directors of Spanish television
felt it wasn't appropriate
to link, uh…
what had happened in Madrid with President Bush,
because that led to Iraq.
And my understanding
was that the directors were trying to insist
on the government's version, that it was ETA.
Bush held me back, he asked if we could talk privately.
He asked me, "Who do you think is behind this?"
And I said, "We're getting the impression it's ETA."
Then he said, "My intelligence services say there's a possibility it wasn't ETA."
When the president said his intelligence services
were thinking it was someone else, well,
I called Aznar to tell him,
and I imagine that Aznar knew
much more than I did at that moment, right?
He was already aware of the issue since he…
Let's say a rumor mill had already started in Madrid.
Not all of us are here! Two hundred are missing!
I've never covered a demonstration like it.
As far as I could see,
you had people just walking in absolute silence, holding candles.
It was so dignified.
And it was so moving, and the message was very clear.
These people were very angry.
NO TO TERRORISM - PEACE
It began with the usual shouts of "No to terrorism."
YESTERDAY, WE ALL DIED
But right then and there, a new voice begins to be heard.
WHO AND WHY?
Completely spontaneously, they asked, "Who was it?"
Who was it? Who was it? Who was it?
That question, at that demonstration, that day,
was clearly telling us
that the people didn't believe the government's version of events.
It seems like some people
want to dismiss the possibility that criminal and murderous ETA is behind this.
As the investigation progresses,
the evidence points more and more towards Arabs and not ETA.
Especially because the numbers from the SIM cards
that were part of the bombs are identified.
Those numbers were traced back to where they were bought,
a store in Lavapiés
owned by an Arab called Jamal Zougam.
Jamal Zougam was a person with a jihadist background.
He 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 they favor an investigative line
regarding that terrorist organization.
Five people have been arrested in connection
with the Madrid train bombings.
They've been linked to a mobile phone found in a bag
containing one of the unexploded bombs.
The first arrests were citizens from Maghreb.
Where's ETA?
The head of the NIC
had been excluded from both the political and investigative meetings,
and suddenly the government asks him to make a statement
blaming the attacks on ETA.
At the same time, by noon on Saturday,
the police had the information about the stores
where they bought the phones used in the attacks.
I met with Minister Acebes in his office
on Saturday at 4:00 p.m. I wasn't told anything.
From Moncloa, I'm being asked to say something
that is obviously going nowhere.
They already knew blaming ETA was useless
and that the Islamist direction was the way to go.
I felt very bad that day.
I felt very manipulated and I wanted to quit right then.
But imagine if the day before the elections I presented my resignation.
I would've directly caused him to lose,
and that was a burden I didn't want to carry either.
Katya, there's due to be a general election
taking place on Sunday.
Does that still go ahead?
It looks like it will go ahead, with the politicians saying
if they postpone elections, it'd be tantamount to giving in to terrorism.
Before the polls open,
the local cell records a video
with the intent of influencing the discussion that had already started
in the media and among Spanish society
regarding who was behind the attacks.
The video was made by a terrorist dressed as a woman
because that was what he had nearby.
Imagine how much desperation they were feeling.
The need 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 the 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 a person like Aznar
wasn't capable of stopping that version,
because it was obvious that the opposition
was going to use the ammunition they were being given.
On the day of reflection
the Spanish left wing went out to the streets
and harshly and excessively criticized the government.
In Spain, in the 24 hours before an election,
any political propaganda is forbidden.
Many of the gatherings in the streets
and in front of the Popular Party headquarters
were organized through social media,
which, at the time, was totally unheard of,
and at the very least, was rare.
These messages said, "We have to do something."
So rather than actually the journalistic establishment
in Spain taking a stand,
it was the people of Spain who said, "This stinks."
The reproaches started strong.
There was 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.
NO LIES - NO WARS - NO DEATHS - NO PP
The government was in trouble.
The opposition smelled blood
and the possibility to unexpectedly change the outcome of the election.
This is the first moment of real internal tension in Spain
since the terrorist bombings.
These people blame the government for what happened.
The nation is grieving, but passions are becoming inflamed.
Spanish citizens deserve a government that doesn't lie to them.
PSOE HEADQUARTERS
A government that always speaks the truth.
The government, since the beginning, has acted
and continues to act with full transparency.
There are so many conflicting theories now,
some still pointing to ETA as the government still does.
Others increasingly convinced
that there must be some sort of al-Qaeda connection.
And in the midst of all this confusion, people go to the polls.
Will it affect the election?
Most people believe the turnout will be higher,
voters will be feeling emotional,
but nobody can predict what impact it will have
on which way they will vote.
On Sunday, 14th, I went down to vote with my husband and daughter.
Since Miriam was leaving for London on Thursday,
she voted by mail.
I asked to be present to make sure Miriam's vote was counted.
I wasn't going to go.
But I did.
I went because my boy wanted to vote, and they didn't let him.
The turnout for the elections was a lot higher,
might have been, had these attacks not happened.
And the people who decided to go to the elections
were not on the whole people who voted for the Popular Party,
for the party that had been in power.
The day of the elections gave the victory, surprisingly, to the opposing party.
I've given orders to have the Spanish troops posted in Iraq
come home as soon and as safely as possible.
When the socialist government came into power
and made good on their campaign pledge to withdraw the forces,
many in the US were disappointed.
Condoleezza Rice called me to express
her surprise, her shock.
Because they didn't warn the Americans, they said nothing.
There was this sense Zapatero is doing what the terrorists have asked.
He should've waited so there wasn't an impression
of a cause-and-effect relationship between the attacks and the withdrawal.
Governments cannot be seen to be giving in to terrorism.
They cannot make political decisions
based on acts of or the continuing threat of terrorism.
He had a campaign promise that he had to deliver on.
I don't think that it changed, frankly,
the degree to which Spain was being targeted.
What is the objective of these… of these attacks?
To change government?
This is a political goal.
But it is important, very different…
that, um, exactly the September 11th,
or the attacks in London, or the attacks in, uh… in Casablanca,
or in Bali or in Istanbul.
It's change in government.
And, uh, well…
They achieved their objective,
because changed government.
I question whether the Madrid cell had thought
they were going to change the course of Spanish history.
Choosing March 11th as the day of the attacks in Madrid
had nothing to do with the elections.
It actually was a strategic choice by the terrorist organization al-Qaeda.
The first evidence of 11th March
having been chosen as the day to attack Madrid
has existed since at least October 19th, 2003.
And on October 19th, 2003,
the general elections hadn't been called yet in Spain.
There is objective data showing that the attacks
were planned in Belgium, in Brussels.
There was a document showing the purchase of a SIM card
that would have been used on March 11th.
In those documents, they put two false dates of birth.
One of them was May 16th, the date of the attacks in Casablanca,
and the other false date was March 11th,
the day the attacks in Madrid would occur.
Both those dates were written down before the elections were called.
So it's difficult to believe that they were in the president's head,
able to know he was going to call elections on the 14th.
With all the data the national police had gathered up to that point,
we started to draw the first conclusions
about all the devices that hadn't exploded.
Once we found out where the SIM cards had been bought,
we were able to locate the phones through the cellular network.
And they were near a house we were already aware of
where the explosives were made, near Morata de Tajuña.
That type of explosive comes from mines,
especially ones located in Asturias.
Conchita Mine is very remote.
It was relatively easy
to hide large amounts of explosive materials there.
They were explosive cartridges,
which were not properly stored, as they should have been.
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 readily available for them.
The linking piece was an individual named Rafa Zouhier,
who knew the perpetrators
and 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, simple as that.
They took them to Madrid and carried out the attacks.
The leader of the cell, El Chino,
was stopped by the Civil Guard
when he was driving from Asturias with 200 kilograms of explosives.
They were stopped, identified, and there was nothing against them.
They fined him and he paid in cash.
They didn't search the trunk where all the explosives were.
The car had fake plates.
If instead of traffic police
an anti-terrorist unit had pulled them over,
I'm certain they would have been arrested.
There were serious coordination failures
between the Civil Guard and the National Police Corps.
And with also 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 as long as they could.
There was then an attempt to put, um, a bomb
on the AVE line from Seville to Madrid.
And my then-boyfriend, now husband,
was travelling on that train and he called me from the AVE and said,
"The AVE stopped and we're delayed." And then I got a call from BBC, London,
they said, "There's a suspected bomb on the AVE line,"
and I was like… "Okay," and I put on the TV,
Spanish television, and I could see the picture of the train stopped.
And I was watching it and I was listening, so my boyfriend on the one phone
and BBC, London, on the other phone,
watching the pictures and I thought,
"Is this gonna happen in front of my eyes and ears?"
Some security guards who were patrolling near the AVE rails
saw a 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 spotted and left.
They cut the fence to access the rails
and they tried to plant some explosives there.
Twelve kilograms of explosives and detonators
were placed under the rail, hidden with rocks.
As the train passed, they would've simply had to detonate it manually.
They placed it a few meters from a bridge.
Had it gone off, it would've been similar carnage to that of March 11th.
Because of the way the explosive device had been planted,
all the passengers 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 who had been to Afghanistan
and returned to Spain was Said Berraj.
Said Berraj must have been the one to teach them how to make explosives.
We were investigating all the phone numbers
that had been in communication with any of 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
where we placed the different phone numbers
of people who could have been involved in the attacks.
OUTGOING
One of the numbers really caught my attention
because it looked very similar to the batch related to Said Berraj.
INCOMING
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 p.m.,
I called my boss, my superior,
and I told him, "I've found the terrorists' hideout."
I asked, "Is anyone in there?"
And Rafa says, "Yes, there are people inside."
Abdelmajid Bouchar was one of the ones in the apartment.
And he went down to take out the trash.
At that point,
he notices a member of the Exterior Information Central Unit nearby.
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 we didn't know
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 number of explosives they could have had
was still high, very high.
It was likely they had it in the apartment.
One of Morocco's State Security Officers called me
since they already had the names of the people we were looking for
and obviously the phones were bugged.
They told me that they called their families in Morocco
to say goodbye.
He 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 up to the floor where their apartment was.
We put a controlled explosive device on the door.
They started shooting from inside and we could hear chanting in Arabic.
The head of the operation ordered us to throw tear gas inside,
and a moment later we saw Javier.
He could see inside because he was using a shield with a window.
He signaled there was someone inside he was talking to
and he said, "Get out slowly! Undress! Undress!"
The blast threw me into the air.
My eardrums were burst, I could barely hear.
When the explosion cleared, I saw I was okay.
I looked up at the building and it was clear the assault was over.
Everything was about to collapse.
Then we all got to work to rescue our teammates
who had been buried under the rubble.
We also took out Javier, 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 then and there.
They put the backpacks in the trains, getting on at Alcalá de Henares.
They got on different trains,
left the backpacks and got off at intermediate stations.
The terrorists had begun,
but hadn't finished a series of attacks they had planned.
They were renting a house located very close to Granada.
One of them left a will.
They were counting on the fact that if they weren't arrested,
then their goal, ultimately,
was to become what they understand to be a martyr.
The grave of GEO member Torronteras, who died during the explosion,
was desecrated.
The coffin was pulled out. His body was removed and burned.
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 faraway deserts.
Or that they're in faraway mountains.
What do you mean?
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 information, 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…
You care that people keep thinking that there is a link,
'cause that will let you defend lies you told between the 11th and 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
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 stoop that low. It just can't.
The 11M Commission was only there
so that politicians could throw insults at each other
at the expense of the victims. It served no purpose.
You had a very bitter controversy
between the political forces
that were running against each other in the election.
People were divided more than ever.
THE ONES BEHIND 11M
Society fractured, but Spain was so quick to fall apart
along those historical, political lines.
AZNAR RESPONSIBLE
Everything fell apart.
Why? Because a new government came in and it all changed.
That's the answer.
There was a smear campaign against the investigative judge,
against the prosecutor.
They wanted, at any cost,
the perpetrators to be the terrorist organization ETA.
And then the conspiracy theory was started.
Pedro J. Ramírez, from the newspaper El Mundo,
along with Federico Jiménez Losantos,
who at that time worked at COPE,
starts spreading stories to raise a flag
saying that it wasn't clear who the perpetrators were.
We ended up turning coincidences
into evidence and putting that on a front page with a tremendous reach.
Several theories start circulating
and they always include a link between ETA
and the Spanish Secret Service working for the Socialist Party.
The preservation of the trains has also been the target of many theories.
The point of conflict is to understand that the trains
are either a crime scene or evidence for your beliefs.
The trains are a crime scene.
And after the police have inspected them and have gathered evidence,
they return to normal service.
They talked a lot about links
between ETA members that had gone to Morocco.
Where'd they find this information?
Morocco never provided this information to us.
The intelligence services didn't either.
Very often the media latch on to a conspiracy theory
because they think they'll make money.
They'll get more readers, they will get more viewers,
claiming superior knowledge.
Everybody thinks it's this thing,
but they know it's that thing.
We're in a commercial war. El Mundo has to leave
its right-wing newspaper competition, ABC, in the dust.
Every 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 undermine the discourse of who was behind 11M
is the dirtiest, most extraordinary journalistic deception
in the history of the Spanish news media since the transition to democracy.
There is no way, beyond any reasonable doubt,
that anyone, in good faith, can believe
that there was possible cooperation between ETA and jihadists.
That cooperation has never existed.
There is no evidence pointing to any collaboration.
Directly or indirectly.
Every attempt at linking the attacks
with the terrorist organization ETA was absolutely fabricated.
There was nothing. Since the beginning, everything pointed to a jihadist cell.
It's had a very pernicious impact since,
because it's woven its way into the narrative
so that many people don't know the real truth
about exactly what happened in Madrid
and continue to believe outright falsehoods.
The damage done,
unnecessarily, gratuitously and unfairly,
to the people who were simply doing their jobs.
Some journalists,
including Jiménez Losantos, directly accused me
of being the ringleader of a police conspiracy,
that I had participated in 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, sadly, 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 Spanish al-Qaeda cell was formed by people with military experience
in the Muslim Brotherhood, and had fled from Syria.
They left an influential leader in their place.
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 motive is to prepare for the jihad.
This cell carried out all activities
relating to financing, radicalization and recruiting.
Al-Qaeda had a very high comfort level in operating in Spain
and believed that they could function there completely under the radar,
completely unnoticed.
Abu Dahdah travelled at least ten or 12 times a year
with the money they had collected in mosques in Madrid…
…to give it directly to Abu Qutada in London.
The Finsbury Park Mosque was acting really as a jumping off point
for recruits across Europe and further afield
to then go to Afghanistan to get trained.
Two months before September 11th,
a person, 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 just said, "No,
it means that they have started to work in the field of aviation."
Holy shit!
Fuck!
The existing al-Qaeda infrastructure in Spain
was the most important supporting network to the 9/11 attack
outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In July, 2001, Mohamed Atta,
the leader of the 9/11 attacks met with one of his key operatives,
Ramzi bin al-Shibh, in Tarragona.
The cell in Hamburg, which was 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 somehow participated or knew about it beforehand."
"And I think we need to 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 arrested,
including their leader.
However, not all the members of the cell are arrested.
Amer Azizi, originally from Morocco and a resident of Madrid,
was Abu Dahdah's right hand man in the Spanish al-Qaeda cell.
He was going to be arrested that day that Operation Dátil happened.
But we didn't know he wouldn't be there.
We found out he fled to Afghanistan.
He decided to carry out some revenge plot 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, starts to give orders
so that the remaining member of Abu Dahdah's cell
that hadn't been arrested, would start to meet and create a new cell.
The decision to attack Madrid was made in Karachi, Pakistan.
Amer Azizi makes that decision in December, 2001,
accompanied by a well-known operative of the Islamic group fighting in Libya.
He presented this attack at a meeting of al-Qaeda senior operatives
in Turkey that occurred early in 2002
where it was approved. Therefore long before the invasion of Iraq,
long before Spanish participation in the coalition operations.
Throughout this process of planning,
Amer Azizi becomes part of al-Qaeda central.
He begins to climb the ranks inside the al-Qaeda organization.
He's appointed by Osama bin Laden himself
as the deputy to head al-Qaeda's external operations.
His relationship with Hamza Rabia
was intent on implementing al-Qaeda operations in Europe
to strike where they could.
Amer Azizi manages to have his plans
to carry out a terrorist attack in Spain
approved by al-Qaeda's leaders
through their external operations command.
Azizi was the key mastermind of the 3/11 attacks.
It was his connections to the senior leadership of al-Qaeda,
including Osama bin Laden, that made this an al-Qaeda attack.
Initially, al-Qaeda's involvement
was completely dismissed and denied,
it was profound skepticism.
It was believed that this was an entirely homegrown cell of terrorists,
when in fact we see concerted, detailed, longstanding,
meticulously planned and implemented
terrorist attacks emanating from the heart of al-Qaeda.
In the 11M terrorist network, there are three fundamental components.
First, what was left of Abu Dahdah's cell.
The second is the Islamic fighting group from Morocco
through their Western Europe network.
And the third component
is comprised of the common criminals turned jihadists
that joined in the summer of 2003.
So it would be a huge mistake to reduce the March 11 network
to a small group of criminals radicalized by the Iraq War.
The Bush administration had taken their eye off the ball
of the old al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and it struck in Spain.
They didn't want to admit it.
They didn't want to build up al-Qaeda because they'd gone into Iraq,
so they deliberately wanted to go along with the notion
that this was all an indigenous, homegrown, uh, local phenomenon.
What's fascinating is that the same denial
was present a year-and-a-half later in London,
following the July, 2005 attacks on London transport,
when in fact all the evidence that has come to light
reflects exactly on the situation in Spain.
Some could say that the UK was the US's strongest ally.
Tony Blair was supporting the US's global war on terrorism.
It was practical, this is where they had resources at the moment.
This is where they had a better chance of launching an attack than somewhere else.
The same could be said for Spain.
You have this network in place, launch the attacks there.
The trial lasted over six months.
It had over 600 witnesses, over 90 expert witnesses, 52 lawyers.
The ruling was based on a careful study
of every allegation from each side.
The defendants didn't receive the same charges.
We had a main group that was being accused only of committing the attacks.
Others were accused of belonging to one of the cells.
Others were accused of collaborating,
others of falsifying documents, and others of providing the explosives.
In the end, it was a technically complicated trial.
The big question was who was the mastermind
and why were the attacks in Madrid carried out?
What was the reason?
The trial wasn't able to determine
why there wasn't a clear mastermind behind the attacks on March 11th.
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,
so we weren't able to prosecute him at that time.
The American intelligence community
knew that Azizi was a central link in this,
but the intelligence community doesn't want to let terrorists know
that we're on their path.
So there was operational reasons
for the intelligence community not to talk about Azizi's role
and that he was a very clear and imminent threat
for future attacks and therefore went after him.
We got information that an American drone
had struck a meeting attended by high-ranking leaders of al-Qaeda
and that when they searched through the rubble,
they found Amer Azizi.
When Amer Azizi died,
the missing piece that allowed us to reconstruct
the development of the plans for the 2004 attacks in Madrid
was a document given to us by US authorities
where they detailed how Azizi had died and who was with him.
This information was transmitted by the United States intelligence services
to the Spanish authorities for the first time in September, 2006.
And again, a more detailed brief on Amer Azizi
and his role in jihadist activities in Spain on March 11th
was provided in September, 2007.
Azizi's importance was not understood
until he was killed along with his boss, Hamza Rabia.
So the theory fell apart that the 11M cell
was comprised of radicals inspired by the words of Osama bin Laden
wanting to fight in his name but without connection to him.
If this had been known at the time the trial took place,
the final conclusion would have been very different.
Azizi is the key piece of the puzzle
that allows us to understand everything that happened
and understand the motive and meaning of the attacks.
The government didn't have enough empathy
for the shock Spain's society was going through.
If I were the president at that time,
the first thing I would've done is go to Atocha.
If Aznar had just summoned the leaders of each political party to Moncloa…
To gather them 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 concept was never discussed.
We would've all understood,
and we wouldn't feel like we'd been deceived.
If at that time the president had asked the citizens to remain calm,
to say that democracy shall remain victorious,
and that in two days there's an election,
and that everyone shall have the right to vote as they choose,
he would've overwhelmingly won.
This had horrible repercussions on the Spanish polity
who saw the government's credibility completely crumble.
The government was remiss,
the government had failed to protect the Spanish people.
This is exactly what terrorists always strive to do.
They strive to make fools of governments. This is exactly what happened in Spain
and exactly the trap the government stepped right into, walked right into.
It's a sad day. It's a date that had a 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.
There's no easy solution,
people feel angry, they look at the past with anger.
Find it very hard to look at the future with hope.
People just have to be mindful that they keep on helping, assisting people.
The victims have shown me the best part of human beings.
Gratitude.
Respect. And understanding.
It's something that you learn to live with. But won't forget.
When a person 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 want to believe something like this won't happen again,
but what we can't do is forget.