1. "Europe Is Scared," Says Le Parisien After Madrid Attacks.
- Author
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Jones, Lucy
- Subjects
- *
INTERNATIONAL relations , *POLITICAL doctrines , *TERRORISM - Abstract
The now-ousted Spanish government immediately blamed the March 11, 2004 explosions in Madrid, Spain, which killed at least 200 people and injured many more, on the Basque separatist group ETA. However, the European press, as well as many ordinary people, questioned whether they instead were al-Qaeda's response to Spain's support for the United States in Iraq. Five British terrorist suspects held by U.S. authorities in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay for two years arrived back in Great Britain March 9, 2004 after having been released without charge. Their detention, wrote Great Britain's newspaper "Guardian" the following day, had been long, shameful and lawless, and they were never given either prisoner of war or criminal suspect status. Home Secretary David Blunkett, the paper continued, quoted the Lord chief justice Lord Woolf's call that in "defending democracy, we must not forget the need to observe the values which make democracy worth defending." The paper concluded: "It is good to have heard these calls. It would have been even better if they had been heard and acted on much earlier in the Guantanamo Bay debacle."
- Published
- 2004