Fernando Reinares (Logroño, 1960) is a researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute and professor of Political Science and Security Studies at the Rey Juan Carlos University. He has taught at Georgetown University in Washington and collaborates on research on radicalization and terrorism at the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internationale in Milan. He is one of the greatest experts on terrorism in Spain, and specifically on the terrorist massacre of March 11, 2004 in Madrid, which is almost 20 years old. On the tenth anniversary he published ¡Matadlos! Who was behind 11-M and why there was an attack in Spain, and in 2021, 11-M. The Revenge of Al Qaeda, books now followed by It Could Be Avoided (all three in Gutenberg Galaxy), a detailed analysis of the chain of myopias that prevented the terrorist plot from being discovered. He arrives in bookstores next Wednesday the 28th.
After a personal interview, and very careful with his answers, Reinares answers La Vanguardia by email.
Are you still investigating 11-M?
Jihadist terrorism is the main topic of my research activity, and 11-M is still the most lethal expression of this type of terrorism that we have known not only in Spain but in Western Europe as a whole. It is inevitable for me to keep an academic file on 11-M open for more than fifteen years, although I have worked and still work on more recent events in the evolution of jihadist terrorism in Spain, such as the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.
His new book is titled It Could Be Avoided and in it he remarks that “serene and rigorous reflection has been postponed for too long.” Why wasn’t there?
The 3/11 terrorists prepared and carried out the attacks without any impediments other than the scope of their abilities. Many of them were well known in the State security forces, the National Intelligence Center and the National Court two, three or even four years before the attacks due to their relationship with jihadist cells and groups. But instead of a reflection dedicated to drawing lessons from 11-M, the Spaniards engaged for too long in a discussion, spurious to be sure, about who to attribute the blame to. I believe that the political fracture and social division that followed 11-M made this much-needed reflection impossible. There was a parliamentary commission of inquiry, but its sessions were greatly affected by the intense disagreement that existed between the two main parties.
Your book is very harsh on security forces. Could it be avoided?
The purpose of the book is to offer a rigorous analysis of a reality that is hard to face and whose crudeness is unquestionable, perhaps that is why it seems harsh, but it has not been written with animosity, and I even avoid personalizations. The fact is that the prior knowledge that police officials had accumulated about a good part of those involved in the 11-M network was not enough to prevent the Madrid attacks from being prepared and carried out, which turned 11-M into a failure. police. But it is equally true that this prior knowledge allowed the Police to begin arresting terrorists just two days after the attacks and then to find the apartment in Leganés where several of them were hiding, all of which frustrated the rest of the plans they had. That surely saved many lives.
Was anything learned? Have the organizations created since then been useful?
After 11-M it was within the Ministry of the Interior, logically, where it was assumed that the threat of jihadist terrorism was going to persist and that this required increasing police information and analysis capabilities, improving coordination mechanisms between services and expand the scope of international cooperation. The fundamental decisions were made in the two years after 11-M, a period of time during which I served as an advisor for anti-terrorist policy matters to the Minister of the Interior himself, who was then José Antonio Alonso, with that agenda in mind. The impact that the attacks had on the police and judicial understanding of jihadist terrorism, together with the reform of the internal security structures that was undertaken and which was continued, explain why no new attacks occurred in Spain until August 2017. A From then on, issues such as coordination between anti-terrorist services had to be reviewed again.
Among other things, it suggests that perhaps among the Muslim communities someone turned a blind eye…
In Muslim communities there were, then as now, Islamist circles in general, or Salafi-influenced circles in particular, which provided the 3/11 terrorists with permissive environments in which to operate. In these environments, the risk of someone warning the authorities of their activities and intentions could be reduced, due to the influence of Islamic doctrines that present loyalty as an obligation that a Muslim always has towards another Muslim, but not always towards the authorities. of a non-Islamic State, especially if, by applying a law other than Sharia, they would thereby upset other Muslims. But I also think that those Spanish citizens who sold stolen explosives to criminals who showed signs of radicalization turned a blind eye. If they had not turned a blind eye, the massacre would also have been avoided.
What questions do you think the ruling (first from the National Court and then from the Supreme Court) does not answer?
The main question that remained unclarified is that of, so to speak, the intellectual author or original instigator of the attacks. And related to this, the true scope of the international connections of the 11-M network. That is why I especially value having been able to identify the mastermind of 11-M after the investigation that I began in December 2008, one year and two months after the National Court handed down its sentence and five months after the Supreme Court issued a second sentence. In my previous book I identify Amer Azizi, a prominent member of the Al Qaeda cell dismantled in Madrid in November 2001, as the ideator and instigator of the Madrid attacks. And I document it with official sources that do not appear in the judicial proceedings that were carried out in Spain to clarify the circumstances related to 11-M.
Did Mustafa Setmarian, a Spaniard of Syrian origin who was placed in a prominent position in Al Qaeda for years, have any direct role?
I do not know of any evidence that allows it to be related, either directly or indirectly.
Why do you choose that day?
There is written evidence of the date of March 11 in a form completed in Brussels on October 19, 2003 and related to Youssef Belhadj, node of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group in the 11-M network. It is evidence that becomes even more relevant when associated with other significant facts. On the one hand, with a statement from Osama bin Laden made public exactly the day before, in which he expressly threatened Spain. On the other hand, with the precedent, in the Western world, of 9/11. In any case, at that time the date of the elections that were held three days later was not known. All this does not necessarily mean that the exact date was decided in Brussels, as it could well have been transmitted to Belhadj, due to his militancy and position regarding the 11-M network. Mohamed the Egyptian, another relevant member of the network, also left a written record of the date, but later, on February 4, 2004.
In some of the main scenarios there have been fingerprints and biological remains that were never identified. Will we be left with that unknown forever?
We can safely say that the 11-M network had at least 25 members, in addition to Azizi, all of whom were at large when the attacks occurred. But in the preparations, and perhaps even in the execution, individuals undoubtedly participated who are not among the condemned, among the Leganés suicides, nor among the escapees whose identity we know. It is likely that the real number of those who in one way or another were immersed in the network is between significantly and considerably higher.
