Between February and July 2007, Javier Gómez Bermúdez presided over the macro-trial for the 11-M attacks. 29 people sat on the bench, including perpetrators, inducers and collaborators, although with the absence of the seven terrorists who immolated themselves in an apartment in Leganés three weeks after the massacre and those who managed to escape; most of them to Syria and Iraq, where they would die fighting with the Islamic State. Gómez Bermúdez receives La Vanguardia at the headquarters of Ramon y Cajal Abogados, a prestigious firm in Madrid, which signed him in 2017, when he took a voluntary leave of absence from his judicial career. He doesn’t rule out returning one day.
When in the first hours that authorship was attributed to ETA, what did you think?
When I arrived at the National Court, almost everyone agreed that it had been ETA. On the previous December 24, he had put 50 kilos of dynamite on the Irún-Madrid express, but the timer’s batteries were dead. Then you automatically associate one thing with another. But after three hours we all started to think he was an Islamist. For many reasons. For example, a Tedax does a visual recognition and literally says: it is rubber 2. The reason is very stupid, and it is that it has a raw color, while Titadine, which was the alternative hypothesis [the one that pointed to ETA], is red .
That morning the Abertzale leader Arnaldo Otegi attributes it to Islamic radicalism. Did he believe you?
From a judicial point of view no. But he used his contact with the gang to confirm whether it had been ETA or not before reacting. Otegi had information, as we already had mid-morning that day, that he was an Islamist.
Do you think that the 11-M trial was the most important in the history of Spain?
It’s hard to say. Perhaps it is the most traumatic event since the Civil War. But there are much more important judgments regarding the advancement of criminal law.
Why were there so many conspiracy theories?
Many factors came together. One, not giving the slightest information about what was being investigated. The secrecy of the summary is one thing, which prevents giving information, but there are ways to maintain contact with citizens through the media. Second, that society was completely divided, with media that supported the Government’s version and others the opposite. Curiously, these sectors are exchanged from the point of view of the treatment of the court and especially of me. Before the trial, I was a dangerous fascist and after the trial I was a dangerous communist. I have always been right-wing and I have never hidden it. I’m conservative, but I’m not ultra about anything. There was political interest in delegitimizing the result of the elections and reaching the next ones and having a different result. And it was downright unpleasant.
The conspiracy theory that has persisted the most has been orchestrated around Jamal Zougam, convicted based on testimony…
That’s not true, that’s proof.
Are the witnesses who recognize you on the trains unquestionable to you?
It’s not me. We are eight judges, five from the Supreme Court and three from the National Court, for whom the testimony is complete. But the conviction is based not only on the testimony, but on much more information: on a telephone card that he used and that had been activated in Morata de Tajuña [where the bombs are assembled], the fact that all the telephones and cards They are bought in his shop… it is true that he does not physically sell them, but his half brother does. There was much more data. And he was a man who had relations with fundamentalism from a long time ago. In fact, he miraculously escaped trial two or three times, especially in Operation Date. It is not a single piece of information. That said, eight magistrates and no one doubts that there is sufficient evidence for a conviction of that magnitude, well, man… many things can happen in the world and we are all human, but from a technical point of view there was no reason to doubt its authorship. There were even strange things: at the trial, his mother and his single brother declared that at 9:30 he was in bed, but not that he was at 7 or 8 [the bombs are placed on four trains leaving Alcalá from Henares starting at 7:01]. But what is surprising is that they did not say it in the instruction when he was in preventive detention. I don’t take it as proof, but as more information. The gym: how curious that you go to the gym the day before and the turnstile is broken and then there is no check-in. But none of those who were at the reception say they saw it.
In general: are these witnesses at a time of so much confusion reliable from a legal point of view?
Basing a conviction only on a visual recognition in a moment of shock or trauma, let’s say it has to be a very solid recognition. In this case there was. But there were two protected witnesses, of Romanian nationality, who fully coincide, and there is a third protected witness who did not come to trial, but whose testimony was incorporated through reading and is also valid, which was identical to theirs. And they didn’t know each other at all. To give an example, ETA’s terrorism has been condemned with twenty times less evidence. We were very meticulous.
What questions remain for you twenty years later?
In no crime, none, is 100% known of what happened. In this case, I believe that we have been aware of more than 90% or 95%. If something harmed the investigation and favored these theories, it was continually reacting to conspiracies. Four months after the attacks we knew the same as we did four years later. It’s just that we end up in ridiculous situations.
Is there anything in that 5 or 10% that arouses greater interest?
The procedural object of a trial is set by the accusations. We start from two premises: first, that the hard core committed suicide in Leganés. And this is an unfillable hole. But secondly, I still don’t know how they all came into contact. One part is Jamal Ahmidan, El Chino, and another part is El Tunisian, Serhane Ben Abdelmajid. But there are some that I don’t know where they came from. Because it was not the object of the process.
How do you think they became fanatical, who was that leader?
I have no doubt there. They had already seen what ETA tried, no one had to come and tell them how they could attack. Any of them, possibly El Tunecino with Allekema Lamari and others, thought of doing it like this. If by mastermind you tell me that it is the individual, man or woman, who devised the way to commit the crime, I tell you that the mastermind was almost certainly among the dead. And the reason is hatred, intolerance. The Tunisian is from an upper-middle class family, who comes here with a State scholarship to study… This man had a deep hatred of everything Western. And like him, everyone in the group, each one for his own reasons. The religious motive is a mere justification.
In some of the scenes there were biological remains and footprints that were never identified. Is it an unknown that will persist?
In Leganés seven people commit suicide and there is an unidentified DNA profile. We don’t have any data.
What differences do you see between the current modus operandi and the ones you were judged on?
At that time we were all with our arms down because we were thinking about ETA. An attack like that did not enter our heads. When the states are armed with legal, police and intelligence mechanisms, which make it very difficult to commit a major attack, the doctrine of the so-called “lone wolf” arises, which is neither a wolf nor a loner, but oh well. It is an individual terrorism that is very easy to execute.
Although he left the judiciary, how to pursue this phenomenon that requires so few tools? How do you combat what is sometimes just the intention to do something?
This is a very interesting question from the point of view of jurists. Because? Because all over the world the reaction is exorbitant. With extreme laws, which are almost dictatorship laws. Since the Patriot Act in the United States, or in Great Britain… Spain reacted very calmly. Unfortunately we had ETA and we had a much more solid base. Self-indoctrination is a very dangerous type of criminal offense, but in Spain there is a court specialized in terrorism, the National Court, which corrects the deviations that could result from a lax interpretation of those types of crimes that are so… so extensive, in the sense that they cover so many possibilities, so many facts. You have to be very cautious in your interpretation.
Do they have enough instruments?
Yes. I don’t think anything else can be done. Consider that the central body of the Criminal Procedure Law dates back to 1882. Modern instruments were needed and the 2014 reform regulates it very well, and very consensually. In 2004 you could not place a microphone in the home of a suspected terrorist without first notifying him. We were in blankets. You couldn’t make ambient recordings either, with directional microphones. There were a number of important legal loopholes.
Why did you leave the judiciary?
For many things. There came a time when for various reasons I thought that he was amortized, that he was never going to progress in his career, he was not going to reach the Supreme Court. I asked for a way out. With the invaluable understanding of President Rajoy and Rafael Hernando, a friend of mine, and other members of what was then the ruling party, they sent me to Paris as a liaison judge. While in France, a close friend, also a retired magistrate, suggested that I join the legal profession. I did not want to return to a judicial career and decided to change scene for a while. It goes for six years.
To return to?
Don’t know. For me, I feel like it. But it’s downright complicated. We’ll see.
