10 November 2004

MADRID-The Association of Guardia Civil officers has called for the suspension of two leading officers after it was claimed they allegedly knew two suspects involved in the Madrid massacre were trying to sell explosives three years before the attacks in which 191 people were killed.

The Spanish daily El Mundo reported Emilio Suárez Trashorras and Antonio Toro tried to build bombs which could be set off using mobile phones in 2001.

The ten bombs used in the attacks on commuter trains in Madrid were set-off using this method.

Trashorras and Toro are in jail accused of selling explosives to the Islamic radicals who mounted the terrorist attack in March.

But the newspaper reported that Guardia Civil officers in Asturias in northern Spain knew the former miners were trying to sell explosives stolen from mines in the area.

Two leading officers who work in Asturias, Pedro Laguna and Fernando Aldea, were named by the newspaper.

The Guardia Civil Association called for the officers' suspension.

Aldea told the parliamentary inquiry into the attacks last month that he did not believe explosives were being sold from the Asturias area, after an investigation was mounted last year.

But the paper quotes a police source who by chance heard a telephone tap in which Guardia Civil officers were heard to say that Trashorras was looking to find people who knew how to set up bombs using mobile phones.

The newspaper suggests this contradicts the testimony of the officers to the parliamentary inquiry.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news