Spain struggles with who to blame

As evidence mounted to suggest that Al Qaeda was behind the train bombings that killed 200 people in Madrid last Thursday, governments across Europe have raised their security-alert levels for fear of further attacks against Washington's allies in its "war on terror."

But the persisting uncertainty over who was responsible for the massacre, and Spanish investigators' continuing pursuit of leads pointing to the Basque separatist group ETA, underscore doubts in some experts' minds about whether a broadly defined war on terrorism is likely to defeat individual terrorists. They fear that focus on the politically neutral tactic of terrorism may obscure the individual criminals using it.

"Terrorism is not an ideology or a political program but a tactic used for very different ends by very different groups," says Florentino Portero, a terrorism expert who heads the Strategic Studies Group, a think tank in Madrid. "You have to deal with different problems in different ways."

Three days after the worst terrorist attack on European soil in the continent's modern history, Spanish police were still struggling to reconcile contradictory pieces of evidence leading them in different directions.

A videotape found Saturday evening, made by a man purporting to be, or to represent, "the military spokesman of Al Qaeda in Europe" and claiming responsibility for the attack, provided further evidence for those blaming Islamic fundamentalists. Police had earlier arrested three Moroccans and two Indians they said were linked to the sale of a cellular phone found in one unexploded bomb, apparently intended to detonate the explosive.

ETA spokesmen have denied any ties to the bombings, and blamed Islamic fundamentalists.

At the same time, the fact that police arrested two ETA suspects last Christmas trying to carry out a train bombing that carried many of the hallmarks of Thursday's attack continued to trouble investigators. The explosives used, police forensic experts have concluded, were of a type ETA has used in the past.

The Moroccan authorities said Sunday they had identified the three Moroccans arrested Saturday, and that none had any known previous links with extremist Islamic groups.

In Madrid, a Moroccan woman who would give her name only as Amina said she knew one of the arrested men, Jamal, and doubted that he was guilty. "He is a normal warm guy, just trying to make a living," she said. "He has a telephone store. He has a Spanish girlfriend, a normal life. He is not an Islamist."

Public perceptions of who was to blame had immediate political implications in Spain, where many voters in Sunday's general elections were angry with the conservative government for having accused ETA immediately and been slow to acknowledge publicly any other suspects.

The ruling Popular Party, which had been leading in opinion polls, appeared vulnerable to charges that it was the Spanish government's enthusiastic support for the war in Iraq - opposed by 90 percent of the population - that had earned the deadly wrath of Islamist extremists.

"The government put itself in the war in Iraq even though no one here wanted it to, and now it is reaping what it sowed," said Cecilio Maezo Martin, walking near the scene of the attack at the Atocha rail station. "The government is manipulating the truth, it is deceiving us."

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