I keep the ticket in my wallet. We were going to take the train to the university but there was a teacher’s strike that day, so the university was closed … The explosions and sirens woke us up,” said prospective Guilford student Evan Cary.
When Cary was visiting a friend in Madrid on March 11, terrorists bombed three train stations in the Spanish capital, killing 191 people.
On April 12, Spanish judge Juan del Olmo charged Fouad el Morabit, a 28-year old Moroccan aeronautical engineering student, with “collaborating with an armed group.”
Three other Moroccans were also arrested in conjunction with the attacks.
According to the New York Times, el Morabit had been “detained, questioned, and released … twice.” However, after reviewing el Morabit’s cellular phone records, the police determined that he was connected to most of the people implicated in the bombings.
The BBC reports that el Morabit lived with Basel Ghayoun, who was spotted by eyewitnesses of the attacks. Several victims also report el Morabit riding one of the targeted trains.
A spokeswoman for Spain’s National Court said the calls “proved he had close relations to all those who are under arrest, or dead.” She went on to say that el Morabit had phoned them on the day of the attacks, as well as the day before.
Additionally, she added that el Morabit knew the ringleader of the plot, Serhane Abdelmajid El Farkhet, who was killed in an April 3 Madrid suburb suicide bombing.
Reuters reports that Spanish police have begun to cast doubt on how el Morabit was able to support a relatively extravagant lifestyle as a student. At one point, el Morabit tried to leave Spain to study in Germany, but was denied required papers. Last month, German police searched an apartment registered to a Fouad el Morabit Amgar, leading to speculation of a German link to the bombings. El Morabit, an articulate and fluent Spanish speaker, maintains his innocence, claiming he had no idea what his friends were planning.
Rumors that al Qaeda has links to the attacks resulted in numerous anti-war demonstrations across Spain, and may have influenced the results of the Spanish election, which was held the Sunday after the attacks. In it, the Socialist Party ousted the eight-year incumbent conservative government.
Socialist Party Secretary Jose Blanco promised that he would uphold his election promise to pull all 1,300 of Spain’s troops out of Iraq, calling instead for “an international effort led by the United Nations to return the situation in Iraq to normal,” according to News Limited.