Talk:2004 Madrid train bombings/The bomb intended to be found intact

The bomb intended to be found intact

Investigating Judge Del Olmo had to be surprised when he received a note from the Vallecas precinct police that mentioned X-rays performed on the bomb found there the night of March 11th and later deactivated. That bomb was the principal evidence that linked Zougam and the other northwestern Africans who committed suicide in the Leganes flat with the attack, and had had a deep impact in the Spanish public opinion before the elections. Judge Del Olmo rapidly requested those X-rays to Sanchez-Manzano, as we know, the head of the TEDAX unit in Madrid, who inexplicably had failed to send them before to be included in the summary.

Well, those X-rays clearly show that the wires that connected the mobile phone and the wires from the detonator were embedded in the mass of explosive, but not joined together. Even hit by a hydraulic hammer, the bomb could not have exploded.

Moreover, its great influence came from the fact that a picture of it was leaked on March 12th and soon later that day broadcast by ABC News, (a news channel that also showed pictures and X-rays related to the London Train Bombings). The problem is that that picture is a fake. The police at the Vallecas precinct no longer had all the components, moved to forensic laboratories, so an officer’s rucksack was added to the remaining components, the picture taken and then leaked. Evidently, someone wanted to get the greatest possible effect on the public opinion before the Election Day.

In addition, this bomb, the #13, is quite different from the one a local police officer found in one of the trains just after the attacks, which, unlike the previous, was not deactivated, but detonated by Sanchez-Manzano men when they arrived to the site. As he told the journalists that same morning, he found in a black rucksack a mobile phone wired to a round Tupper-ware container. The detonator’s wires were black and blue. This does not match any of such devices made in Spain. The container was either orange or contained what it seemed to be an orange substance. By the way, that is Titadine’s color.

Even thinking in an acute Daltonism attack of the local police officer, the truth is that, as the investigators say, the bomb #13 found in the Vallecas precinct appears to be composed by two very different parts. The soldering in the mobile phone is cute and accurate, but the explosive was untidily massed in a common plastic bag, and the wires were not connected, as if two different persons, a first-class worker and a rather messy one had made it. What the local police officer saw in the black rucksack left in the trains before the TEDAX team arrived appeared to be a precise job from start to finish.

As the words “fabricated evidence” loomed over the device #13, investigating Judge Del Olmo received yet another communication, this one from the Civil Guard unit that is in charge of the investigation of 3/11. They asked whether Metenamine is a component of Goma-2 ECO.

The message had the immediate effect, probably wanted by the Civil Guards, of Judge Del Olmo sending on April 4th 2005 a request to Sanchez-Manzano in order to clarify the matter

Metenamine (hexametilentetramine) is an industrial chemical and a raw material to manufacture the high-tech explosive Hexogen and its derivatives, such as RDX. This compound mixed with dynamite enhances its detonating power.

Finally, more than one year after the attacks, Sanchez-Manzano has acknowledged that the explosive found in the bomb #13 contains no Metenamine, thus being different from the one located in a van near the Alcala de Henares station, where the bombs were loaded in the trains. In this van, whose theft is even stranger, was found a tape on Koranic teachings for beginners, triggering during the Islamist lead on the evening of March 11th. Both the van and the device #13 were the evidence the leftist media groups based their criticism against the Aznar government, because Sanchez-Manzano said that the explosives they contained were the same, and the mobile phone used as a timer in the bomb #13 had a SIM card sold in Zougam’s, a Moroccan, store. Thus, evidently, 3/11 was the work of Islamists. Now that there is growing concern that relying on that device as evidence in a court of law is a serious risk, the entire official version of 3/11 is sinking, at the same rate the lies utilized to deceive the public opinion arise.

For much less than three Sanchez-Manzano’s alleged deceptions – the telephone number of his unit next to his name in Toro’s sister phone book, the hidden X-rays that proved that the bomb #13 could not explode; and the different composition of its explosive – any Spanish citizen would have been put behind bars. However, as we’ll see, it appears as if Judge Del Olmo has a natural reluctance to arrest any police officer.