Confirmed: it was Al-Qaeda

25/12/2004 21:29 | Categories: News | 0 Comments 

In a video dropped in a bin in Madrid, Al-Qaeda claimed being reponsible of the deadly blasts that killed over 200 and left 1400 wounded in Madrid last Thursday. And they say there will be more.
This video came in a moment where the stubborness of the government made them keep saying that ETA was the whole responsible of the blasts, despite things like the letter sent to an London-based arabic newspaper (full text of the letter) or the differences in the modus operandi of the attacks when compared to ETA operations. The Spanish government wanted (and needed!) make people believe that ETA was behind them. They had based part of their political campaing (today Sunday 14th of March is presidential elections day) on the fact that a united country was needed if we were to end once and for all with the deadly threat that ETA has meant to Spain for the last 30 years. The problem was that they kept hiding facts from people and offering misleading information to the media (most of them are either controlled by the government or were related to it in one way or another) (Babelfish translation of a very good editorial about this / original version) In an unprecedented move, the anti-terrorist group of the Spanish police decided to act and captured 3 suspects of arabic origin and 2 more subjects who are related to the bloody bombings. The anti-terrorist police had claimed since the very beginning that it was very unclear that ETA was involved, if not at all but the government ignored them. Yesterday, after the captures and the surfacing of the tape, the government had no other option but to admit that Al-Qaeda had something to do with it.
The Spanish population is not happy with the way in which the government has dealt with the issue. Not to mention that Mr. Aznar put his political interests before the interests of his own country by hiding the truth. In the meantime, some enraged citizens decided to spontaneously gather in front of the main offices of the Partido Popular. Despite the pacific nature of the gathering, the government considered necessary to send the riot police in Madrid (pictures of the gathering in Madrid) and in Barcelona. In Barcelona, over 7000 people gathered there, even blocking the cars driving through one of the biggest streets in the city.
Mr. Rajoy, the hand-picked successor of Mr. Aznar, is suffering hallucinations and demanded that the PSOE (the left-wing party and biggest rival of PP in Spain) stops encouraging people to go to this gatherings and qualified them as proofs of "intolerance" (Babelfish version). But Mr. Rajoy, don't you see that the country is fed up with your lies? Do you think people have no brain of their own and need a political party to tell them what to do?
I sure hope that people make them pay for what they've done so far today in the elections...