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/ 13 December 2004

Spanish leader wants terrorism pact

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Monday proposed an international pact against Islamist terrorism. He was addressing a parliamentary commission investigating the Madrid train bombings. Meanwhile, a Spanish judge on Monday was to question an alleged mastermind of the train bombings.

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/ 6 December 2004

Seven bombs in seven cities

Seven bombs went off in as many Spanish cities on Monday within the space of half an hour, slightly injuring five people, after anonymous callers claiming to speak for the underground Basque separatist group ETA told a Basque newspaper to expect the explosions.

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/ 17 November 2004

Maria Gomez and the faces of Belmez

One day in 1971, when Spanish farmer Miguel Pereira Gomez came home from the fields, he noticed something strange on the floor of the family house. ”It is a face,” his mother said. Since then, the village of Belmez near the southern city of Jaen has become something of a pilgrimage site for people interested in paranormal phenomena.

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/ 22 October 2004

EU vice-president wishes for Castro’s death

Loyola de Palacio, the Spanish vice-president of the European Commission, was on Friday quoted by press reports as saying she hoped Cuban leader Fidel Castro would die as soon as possible. ”I hope he dies one day, and I hope to see it,” transport and energy commissioner de Palacio told Spanish journalists Thursday in Brussels.

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/ 28 September 2004

Spanish group vying for Gautrain contract

Spanish construction group ACS-Dragados is vying with a Franco-Canadian-led consortium for the right to build a high-speed rail link in South Africa ready for the 2010 World Cup finals, the Spanish financial daily La Gaceta reported on Monday. The 1,2-billion dollar (R7,6-billion) project would link Pretoria with Johannesburg and the Johannesburg International airport, about 80km further south.

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/ 28 July 2004

Forest fires engulf Europe

Two people burnt to death after their car was engulfed in a huge forest fire in Spain, officials said on Wednesday as firefighters battled blazes in many parts of sweltering southern Europe. Portugal appealed for more help from its European partners and in France authorities said they had succeeded in containing a large blaze.

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/ 22 July 2004

The dictator’s Achilles heel

Legal action in Spain and the United States taking aim at secret bank accounts of President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea could become a weapon to help put an end to his 25-year dictatorship, say opposition leaders and activists from the West African nation.

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/ 3 May 2004

Spanish govt wants to monitor mosques

The Spanish government is considering monitoring mosques and imams to curb Islamic extremism blamed for the March 11 terror bombings in Madrid, the foreign minister said on Monday. ”We can require of the imam … that it be known what he is going to say in the mosque,” said Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso.

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/ 5 April 2004

Spain detains more bombing suspects

Spain said on Monday it had arrested two more men linked to the Madrid train bombings after a weekend raid in which the alleged mastermind of the attacks and four accomplices blew themselves up. Police further tightened security on public transport, airports and strategic sites including nuclear reactors.

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/ 4 April 2004

Madrid terror suspects blown away

Three suspects in the Madrid railway bombings blew themselves up on Saturday in a southwestern suburb of Madrid as police prepared to storm their apartment, setting off a powerful explosion that killed one special forces agent and wounded 15 police officers, the interior minister said. Saturday’s news further shocked Spaniards, still traumatised by the March 11 bombings that killed 191 people.

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/ 2 April 2004

Bomb found on Spanish rail line

Police found a bomb on Friday on a high-speed rail line between Madrid and Seville, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said. Bomb-disposal experts alerted by a railway employee found 10kg to 12kg of explosives, possibly dynamite, under a track about 60km south of Madrid on the route to the southern city of Seville.

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/ 26 March 2004

Spanish judge questions blast suspects

Examining Judge Juan del Olmo on Friday began questioning two suspects linked to the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, judicial sources said. The sources said Del Olmo was interrogating Faisal Alluch and Khalid Oulad Akcha, arrested last weekend with two other suspects. The four are all Moroccan nationals.

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/ 12 March 2004

‘Today, they killed every Spaniard’

Commuters sobbed, lit candles and left flowers on Friday at Madrid’s Atocha station, a normally bustling railway hub turned sadly quiet after the devastating terrorist attacks. Trains had to roll past two of the bombed-out shells of the four trains hit in the attacks on Thursday. The hulks were still on the track just outside the station.

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  • E-mail warns of ‘black wind of death’
  • Another bomb found in Madrid
  • A new — and bloody — style of attack
  • African Union condemns blasts
  • Our thoughts are with you: Mbeki
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    / 12 March 2004

    Another bomb found in Madrid

    Another bomb was found following Thursday’s bombings of four Madrid trains that killed 192 people, radio reports said on Friday. The undetonated bomb was found under a pile of luggage which had been deposited after the terrorist attacks in a police station in the southeast of Madrid.

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    / 11 March 2004

    At least 190 dead in Madrid train blasts

    At least 190 people were killed and more than 1 000 injured early on Thursday in near-simultaneous explosions on trains in Madrid at the height of morning commuter traffic — only 72 hours ahead of Spanish general elections. Thirteen bombs were planted around Madrid and 10 exploded, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.

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    / 16 February 2004

    ‘I never said Iraq had weapons’

    Former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Spanish radio in Madrid on Monday that at no point had he ever said that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Spanish government based its justification for supporting the war in Iraq on UN claims that Iraq possessed the weapons.

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    / 6 February 2004

    Spanish poll: Civil war talk infuriates candidates

    Spain’s bruising general election campaign took another bitter turn this week when the parties began rowing over the civil war. Right-wing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar called on the Socialist Party leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, to order his campaign team to stop making references to the conflict that killed at least half a million people.