The Hindu : International : `Aznar regime lied on Madrid blasts'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 15, 2004

International

International

`Aznar regime lied on Madrid blasts'

By Giles Tremlett

MADRID, DEC. 14. Spain's former Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, wiped all computer records at his office referring to the March 11 Madrid train bombings and the rest of his period of Government, said his successor Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero yesterday.

Mr. Zapatero told a parliamentary commission on the bombings that he had no idea whether records were made of crisis meetings held at the Prime Minister's Office after the attacks that killed 191 persons, as computer hard-drives and security copies were wiped clean. ``There was nothing, absolutely nothing ... everything had been wiped,'' Mr. Zapatero told a raucous session of the parliamentary commission. ``There is nothing from March 11 to March 14 in the Prime Minister's Office.'' Mr. Zapatero, whose Socialists won a surprise election victory three days after the bombings, said the incoming Government had been left the bill for the erasing.

`Massive deceit'

The newspaper El Pais reported yesterday that the job cost euros 12,000 and included erasing all E-mail records. The only records handed to the incoming Government were paper documents, the newspaper reported.

Mr. Zapatero accused Mr. Aznar's conservative People's party Government of having tried to fool Spaniards into believing the armed Basque group ETA, not radical Islamists, carried out the attacks. ``It was massive deceit,'' he said.

He said Mr. Aznar's Government began deliberately misleading Spaniards from the afternoon of the attacks, when police found that the explosives in the bombs were not, as suspected earlier in the day, of the kind habitually used by ETA.

Mr. Zapatero said the attacks revealed a series of security failings that had allowed the Islamist bombers to plant a dozen bombs on the morning rush-hour trains. —

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