Madrid train bombings in 2004: "None of what they were telling us was real"

This Tuesday marks the twenty-first anniversary of the March 11, 2004 attacks in Madrid, the largest terrorist massacre on European soil. For this reason, VOZ revisits the exclusive interview with Luis del Pino, one of the few Spanish journalists who sounded the alarm about the failures and gaps in the investigation of attacks that, twenty-one years later, are still looking for answers.

Mario Noya, director of VOZ, spoke with Luis del Pino about what happened on that day - and the months and years that followed - in the Spanish capital. From the explosion of four train carriages at four railway stations, causing the death of 193 people and injuring and maiming nearly 2,000 people; to the subsequent police investigation and judicial sentence in a path plagued with irregularities, lies and unknowns. In the words of Luis del Pino himself, one of the greatest experts on this terrorist attack, "the whole official version of 11-M is false and botched."

Known as "the Spanish 9/11," the March 11, 2004 attacks in Madrid caused a huge rift in Spanish society and politics. After the explosion of the trains, an unusual event took place: the headquarters of the Partido Popular (conservative party governing Spain at the time) were surrounded by mobs of citizens shouting "murderers." Moved by the extreme left and the opposition led by the Socialist Party, hundreds of citizens blamed the Government of the moment for the attacks due to the Spanish participation in the Iraq war.

In this sense, Luis del Pino acknowledges before the microphones of VOZ that this irresponsible action of the Spanish left in the face of the attacks was one of the reasons that led him to take an interest in the investigation of the events.

The investigation of the attacks: bungling and false evidence

Luis del Pino recalls how he gradually discovered gaps and inaccuracies in the investigation of the attacks. A few months after the massacre, the order of the judge who was investigating the case pointed out that the alleged terrorists of 11-M had had their phones tapped since before the attack. A fact that, despite appearing in the summary, was not reflected by the Spanish media until some time later.

The journalist emphasizes one of the cornerstones of the investigation: the backpack that appeared in a Madrid police station hours after the massacre and which served as the basis for the entire investigation into the attacks. It is a backpack-bomb that mysteriously appeared without detonating and whose contents were leaked to the international press to echo that, supposedly, the material inside was the same that had been used in the trains that exploded. This backpack was used as fundamental evidence in the investigation of the case since, surprisingly, the investigating judge ordered just a few hours after the attacks to destroy all the evidence on the ground, from the remains of the exploded trains to the victims' clothes. "Nobody knows where that bomb came from. It does not appear in any evidence collection record," recalls Luis del Pino.

24 hours after the massacre they destroyed the crime scenes by scrapping the trains. Everything disappeared and was burned in a landfill.

The evidence of the backpack is so contradictory that, as an example, Luis del Pino recalls that the bag that appeared in the police station was loaded with shrapnel while, on the contrary, no shrapnel appeared in a single one of the bodies of the victims of the attacks.

These are not the only gaps and contradictions in the case. Luis del Pino recalls that, surprisingly, the alleged terrorists convicted of the massacre not only did not claim responsibility for the attack (something common among jihadists, who are proud of their actions) but twenty years later continue to defend their innocence. Not only that, with time it became known that some of the alleged terrorists were confidents of the Spanish Police.

The researcher also narrates the episode of the Leganes suicide bombers, a chapter after 11-M in which, according to the official version, seven terrorists blew themselves up when surrounded by the police. The strange thing, recalls Del Pino, is that these alleged terrorists blew themselves up six hours after being surrounded, allowing the security forces to evacuate the building in which they were housed and causing no more victims than those of the alleged Islamists themselves. These alleged terrorists were not even autopsied and, despite the fact that according to the official version their bodies were found mangled, several copies of the Koran were found next to them completely intact.

Del Pino recalls in the interview with VOZ the numerous contradictions in which the official version of the facts incurred, which, once after the trial, decided to shelve the case and not reopen a single avenue of investigation.

The whole official version of 11-M is false and shoddy. Nothing at all fits in the official version.Luis del Pino

What is behind the 11-M attacks?

Within the possible interests behind the 11-M attacks, Luis del Pino points out several lines of investigation. One of them is that everything points to the fact that "those who fabricated the false official version have no relation with those who committed the attack." In this sense, the journalist considers that "those who cover up the real authorship of 11-M are part of the sewers [deep state] of the Spanish intelligence services."

This theory arises from the comings and goings that the investigation into the attacks had in the early days. At first, the massacre was attributed to the pro-independence terrorist group ETA. Subsequently, when everything pointed to ETA. The conservative government was accused of lying in a dynamic in which numerous Spanish media and popular faces collaborated, who took advantage of the situation to call for a change of government towards the left, something that finally culminated in the elections of March 14, in which the Socialist Party came to power and began to implement the policies that twenty years later have culminated with the presence of ETA terrorists in the institutions and the approval of amnesty laws for terrorists in the Spanish Parliament.

Other unknowns, such as the type of explosive used; the possible presence of international mercenaries in Madrid; the lack of interest in reopening the investigation into the massacre or the mysterious phrase of the judge who presided over the tribunal: "Spanish society is not ready to know what happened," are treated in depth in this exclusive interview that you can see here in its entirety.