Spanish government aims to control mosques and imans in Spain

In what is considered as quite a controversial move, Spain's socialist government has decided to try to curb extremist messages sent out by moslem religious leaders in mosques. Earlier this week Spain's Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, told reporters: "It is important that we know what is said in the Friday sermon. Mosques have sprung up in Spain in a completely uncontrolled fashion."

Yesterday his opinion became official policy, as after the cabinet meeting the vice-president and government spokeswoman, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, that the Government intended to work with moslem communities in Spain to prevent mosques from being used to give violent messages. According to the PSOE spokeswoman, reforms will be made "seeking maximum consensus with groups, respecting religious freedom and the freedom of citizens. According to Cadena Ser, sources from the Spanish judiciary have specified that "the majority of moslem religious services in Spain respect Spanish law, but we have received reports from the Moslem community that some minorities use these ocasions to promote violence. And the Spanish Constitution specifies that religious freedom is determined by public order"

US citizen arrested in relation to Madrid train bombings.

Today the FBI has confirmed reports published yesterday in Newsweek that a US lawyer had been detained by the FBI in connection with the 11th March Madrid train bombings

Brandon Mayfield, 37, was arrested on a material witness warrant and has not been charged with any crime, according to El Pais. This kind of warrant allows the government to hold people suspected of having direct knowledge about a crime or to allow time for further investigation into the witness.

Yesterday Newsweek quoted sources as saying the lawyer had been under round-the-clock surveillance by the FBI for some time and that he was arrested by FBI agents in Portland. His family have denied that Brandon has any connection to terrorist attacks."

Spanish government orders a full investigation of events around the 11-M terrorist attacks

Yesterday the Spanish government said it would create a special commission to investigate the 11 March train bombings in Madrid. The announcement was given after the leader of the opposition, Mariano Rajoy, asked for a commission to be established to investigate "what happened in Spain between 11th and 14th March".

Until now the PSOE has said that no commission would be created before the appearance of the former Interior Minister, Angel Acebes, before the Official Secrets Commission.

Yesterday, responding to requests from the PP in the light of information published yesterday in the media, and to other opposition parties, the Government said that the commission would be set up. But that its prime mission would be to investigate how to prevent a similar catastrophe from ever occuring again.

Special commissions in Spain allow political parties to call on witnesses, and both proceedings and results of the commission are generally public.

Reports suggest that immediately after Madrid 11-M bombings, Spanish police investigations pointed towards a possible link with Islamic terrorism.

According to El Pais and Cadena Ser today, police reports describing the activities carried out by police during the hours following the Madrid train explosions show that police followed clues leading to islamic terrorist groups right from the beginning. If this is true, then these police reports seem to give strenth to accusations that the Interior Minister of the Popular Party Angel Acebes (informed at all times of the police investigation) deliberately misled the Spanish population, and international community, when he insisted for 48 hours that the main lines of investigation pointed to ETA as the most likely suspects.

According to the article in El Pais, the same day of the bombs, police searched the rooms of two hotels in Madrid, one occupied until 10th March by a Malasian sultan, and the other by two Arab citizens (neither of the searches led to any arrests). Police also obtained passenger lists of all international flights and found a van in a suburb of Madrid containing a tape with recordings of the Coran. Various witnesses injured in the explosions were interviewed by police, and reported having seen Arab passengers on the trains carrying bags similar to the four bags containing explosive devices found by police near the scene of the crimes. The description of one man by two witnesses were so detailed that police were able to do a robot image of Jamal Zougam, currently being detained by the Spanish authorities.

According to El Pais, the whole poice report only contains two lines referring to ETA. They correspond to a version given by one witness who said he had seen two suspicious-looking people on the train who "might have been Basque". The lack of any more concrete evidence to back the witness's statement led to the police decision not to investigate further along these lines.

On the afternoon of 11th March, Angel Acebes appeared before the world media and said "There is no doubt Eta is responsible". The editors of two of Spain's most popular newspapers, El Periodico and El Pais, both received unprecedented phone calls from President Aznar to inform them that ETA was responsible for the attacks. And according to the Association of Foreign Media in Madrid, high-ranking government officials telephoned several journalists shortly after the bombings requesting them to pinpoint Basque separatist group ETA as the perpetrator of the attacks in their reporting. The telephone calls were allegedly made even after the discovery of the suspicious van containing Arabic tapes on the evening of the attacks.

The next day, after ETA had denied responsability, and increasingly Spanish people and media were talking about a possible link between the crimes and islamic terrorist groups, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ana Palacio, underlined the government's stance when she said "Everything appears to indicate that this terrible carnage is the work of Eta."

Aznar admits his government lowered its guard against the threat of Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism

In a new book written by Jose Maria Aznar and published yesterday ("Eight years of government, a personal view of Spain"), the former Spanish president Mr. Aznar says his government's success in fighting the armed Basque separatist group, ETA, may have led Spain to lower its guard against the threat of terrorism by Islamic extremists. Aznar's government immediately blamed ETA for the March 11 train bombings, which took place just three days before Spain's general election, and voters' anger at how the government handled information in the hours after the attack contributed to the Popular Party's electoral defeat.

This is the first time Aznar has admitted any failings during the crisis. Neither he nor his party have been prepared to listen to any criticism related to the way in which they handled the aftermath of the terrorist attack. Infact, his admission comes only a week after the former Interior Minister, Angel Acebes, launched an extraordinary verbal assault against his successor, José Antonio Alsonso, in which he accused the new Interior Minister of being "miserable", "incompetent", "indecent", "mean" and "vile". Acebes was reacting to a declaration made by Alonso in which he said he believed that PP Government had shown a clear lack of political foresight prior to the 11-M terrorist attack. The Popular Party leader, Mariano Rajoy, wrote a letter to Zapatero, in which he underlined his party's fury and indignation at Alonso's comments.

There is no doubt that the last few months have probably been the worst ones of Jose Maria Aznar's political career. He has been criticised at home and abroad for the way his party managed information immediately after the 11-M attacks, and he had to witness people's fury at first hand when he was shouted at during the 12th March mass demonstration in Madrid held to condemn the attack, when he went to vote on election day, and even during the mass held to honour the victims of the train bombings infront of dozens of world leaders. In all his appearances on television since the elections, Aznar has been very serious and sombre, and he has found it difficult to raise a protocolary smile during the various power exchanging ceremonies which he has been required to attend over the past few weeks. In his book's epilogue, Aznar describes his version of events on 11th March, and refers to what he calls the recent formation of a "new party of hate" made of up "all those who have taken advantage of the situation to transmit hate, distill sectarianism and encourage the destruction of adversaries"

Aznar's wife, Ana Botella, also presented a book recently called "Eight years in La Moncloa" (the official presidential residence).

Domestic violence and womens rights in Spain.

Today the State Home Secretary, Antonio Camacho, and the Chairwoman of the Observatory Against Domestic Violence and Abuse, Montserrat Comas, have their first meeting to discuss the latest case of domestic violence in Spain which occurred despite the fact that the man accused of murdering his former wife and two children, had a court order to stay away from his family and from his former home. Camacho and Comas want to see how they can enforce such court orders in order to protect victims of domestic abuse.

The whole of Spain has been shocked by the fact that the woman burned to death in her home with with her children this weekend had repeatedly asked for protection and was scared of being left on her own with the children in her home because of threats received from her violent ex-partner. In the past 4 months, 19 women and 4 children have been killed in Spain as a result of domestic abuse - on average one woman dies per week at the hands of her partner or ex-partner. Under Franco, domestic violence was not even considered to be a crime, and divorce was illegal in Spain until 1981.

When Zapatero became President last month he described Spain's domestic violence record as the country's "worst shame" and an "unacceptable evil". The first draft of a new "gender violence" law has already been passed and the Socialists aims to bring new domestic violence legislation before parliament by the summer.

Last week the Spanish Minister for Work and Social Affairs, Jesus Caldera, said Spanish society needed to change its general attitudes towards women, which should be impressed upon school children through the study of "ethics and equality". Caldera has challenged the way women are portrayed in Spanish adverts, and has announced the government's intention to break women's "chains of dependence" on their partners by improving their employment possibilities and providing accommodation alternatives.

Sr. Zapatero has promised to make equality between the sexes "an emblematic task" and has already appointed as many women as men to serve in his Government. Interestingly, the Socialists received more votes from women than from men in the last general elections which suggests that their message certainly got through to a large section of the feminine vote who now expect them to deliver their promises.