Spain’s intelligence service is “99 percent certain” Muslim not Basque militants perpetrated the Madrid train bombings that killed 200 people, a Spanish radio station reported on Saturday. The report by private radio SER, whose owners have links to the opposition Socialists, flew in the face of government assertions armed group ETA was the prime suspect in the attacks that have traumatized Spain and sent jitters round the world…. If it were ETA, it would be a major escalation for a group that has killed 850 people in Spain over 36 years and is listed as a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.
There’s no way it’s ETA. ETA has been around for 36 years, and not only did the Madrid bombings violate a long-standing pattern of behavior by the Basque separatists, but the fatalities would represent almost 20 percent of the murders committed by the group in all that time. I’m sure there’s a lot of Europeans besides the Spanish government who would like to believe that it’s a Spanish-only affair, but logic suggests otherwise.