Spanish Police Work to Verify Videotape

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/international/europe/14CND-SPAI.html?ex=1079931600&en=8af002ac070e55a5&ei=5043&partner=EXCITE


By DOREEN CARVAJAL
International Herald Tribune

Published: March 14, 2004


ADRID, March 14 — Spain's national police worked today to verify the authenticity of a videotape of a man who boasted that Al Qaeda had bombed Madrid's commuter trains in revenge for the government's endorsement of the Iraq war. Five arrests were also made as the police tried to determine who was responsible for the series of explosions Thursday that killed 200 people.

"We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid, just two and a half years after the attacks in New York and Washington," said the man who appeared in the video dressed in Arab robes, speaking Arabic with a Moroccan accent and identified as Abu Dujan al Afgani. "It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies."

The discovery of the videotape, retrieved from a waste basket near a Madrid mosque on Saturday, emerged hours after Interior Minister Ángel Acebes announced the arrests of three Moroccans and two Spaniards of Indian origin whom investigators tracked down through a cell phone found with an unexploded bomb.

Mr. Afghani, whose name is evidently a nom de guerre, claimed to be the military spokesman for Al Qaeda in Europe.

Mr. Acebes said neither Spain's intelligence services nor European intelligence agencies had ever heard of the man. "We are trying to find out if the man exists," he said.