Madrid Bombers Attack Adopted Homeland

MADRID, Spain - They were young, they were angry and they almost got caught. A highway patrolman stopped members of the Madrid bombing cell as they drove a stolen Volkswagen toward Spain's capital with a trunk full of dynamite a week before the train bombings. But all they got was a ticket.

It's another baffling detail of a terrorist attack that killed 191 people, wounded more than 1,800 and is blamed on men with nicknames like Mowgli, the boy in "The Jungle Book."

In their final minutes of life, poised to blow themselves up rather than surrender or be arrested, some pulled out cell phones and called home to say goodbye. "They were very emotional calls," one Spanish official said.

The highway encounter - a colossal what-if that might have averted the tragedy - was simply bad luck for authorities, the official said. The car had not yet been reported stolen, the North African immigrants inside had their residence papers in order and the driver had a valid license.

The officer did not open the trunk, which was packed with 440 pounds of dynamite the cell had acquired in a coal-mining region of northern Spain.

They lived in Madrid quietly and prosperously for years, only to rise up and punish their adopted homeland, according to interviews The Associated Press conducted with officials familiar with the investigation.

They did it on a shoestring budget - defense and security analyst Manuel Coma of the Royal Elcano Institute said it may have cost as little as $1,000 - raising money by peddling hashish and Ecstasy and stuffing dynamite and shrapnel into backpacks at a decrepit rural cottage with no electricity or running water.

Turning young men with comfortable lives into killers for the cause of Islamic holy war requires brainwashing, said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at St. Andrew's University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Why Spain? First, conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar backed the United States firmly in the Iraq war, Ranstorp said.

But Muslims in North Africa also know that in 1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel expelled Moors who had occupied much of Spain for 800 years in a kingdom called al-Andalus. A letter and a video claiming responsibility for the Madrid attacks in the name of al-Qaida and threatening more bloodshed mentioned the term.

For the bombers, "this is not some distant, historical issue," Ranstorp said. Spain, he said, "represented a double evil that needed to be countered."

Spanish officials say the ideological instigator of the Madrid cell was Fakhet, who preached radical Islam at a mosque across the street from the Madrid apartment where he lived with his 17-year-old wife.

Some excellent background information in this piece.

There are many lessons to be learned from this, for those who are willing to learn them.

That Europe must control immigration much more carefully is chief among those lessons.

This composite photo released by Spain's Interior Ministry shows suspects on remand for their alleged involvement in the terror attacks of March 11 in Madrid. From left top are, Vinay Kohli and Suresh Kumar from India, Mohamed Chaoui, Mohamed El Bakkali, Khamal Zougan, Mohamed Al Hadi Chedadi, Abderrahim Zabak and Abdelouahid Berrak all from Morocco, Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras of Spain, then Rafa Zouhier, Faissal Allouch, from Morocco, Basel Ghalyoun from Syria, Hamid Ahmidan, Othman El Gnaout, Abdlilah El Faoual. El Akil, Rachid Aglif and Fouad El Morabit Amghar, all from Morocco. (AP Photo/Spain Interior Ministry/HO)

Actually, I think it's a little too late for Europe to control immigration (aside from the fact that it is easy for Moroccans to get into Spain illegally).

The biggest problem is that Europe has lost confidence in its own culture and history, and these people no longer see themselves as entering European culture, but as being called upon to impose their own. And since their own seems to be stuck in the 7th century, there's going to be a problem here. But Europe refuses to acknowledge it.

"And they plotted under the very nose of police who've been monitoring Islamic extremists for a decade and even broke up an alleged al-Qaida cell accused of providing logistics and financing for the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. The home of one prime suspect in the Madrid attacks, Jamal Zougam, was searched under a court order in 2001. But he was not arrested."

And the liberals keep whining about violating civil rights, these folks aren't migrating to become good members of their chosen nation. They are here to spread chaos and if a few good muslims get caught up and deported, well they COULD speak out against the criminals that are the true reason for hating islam.

Hmmm...well, I dunno. Spain has only something like 1-2% Muslims, from what I've read before. I think they need to make sure that it doesn't get to 10-20%.

Anyhow, I agree with you about Europe's failure to embrace its own (Christian) culture.

I think it is of note, although no longer surprising to anyone who's been paying attention, that these guys were not motivated by poverty, injustice, or anything other than quasi-religious kookery and hatred. They were living comfortably, in some cases at the teat of Spanish society. And they bit the teat that fed them. Hard.

>Turning young men with comfortable lives into killers
>for the cause of Islamic holy war requires brainwashing,

Brainwashing is an inappropriate term. Brainwashing implies 'forced learning,' often including torture and/or sleep depravation. I strongly doubt anything of this nature was involved. If any pain was involved, it was self-inflicted preparations for death (the extended fasting, etc).

It seems the process is more like hypnotism. there must be an hypnotic expert (often called the handler) who 'recruits' the individual lacking inhibition to suicidal-homicidal suggestion. If you have seen a hypnosis show, the expert asks for 5 to 10 volunteers from the crowd. This is filter #1. The group is then walked through a calming process and offered a suggestion. Those that accept the suggestion most completely remain on stage, the rest leave. This is filter #2. In each case, the candidate population drops by 90%. If the candidate population is one million, it takes only 5 filtering tests to identify the 10 most exceptionally suggestive individuals. These individuals can come from any economic background. Reality is what the handler suggests and nothing else.

The critical issue is what kind of suggestive weakness the 'handler' seeks. In the case of Al-Qaeda, they are looking for weakness to suicidal-homicidal suggestion. If we want to stop Al-Qaeda, we need to identify the filtering tests and handlers.

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