Spaniards voted yesterday in a general election thrown wide open by a reported al-Qaeda claim that it staged the Madrid rail bombings to punish the government for supporting the Iraq war.
Ruling Popular Party candidate Mariano Rajoy led most polls until last Thursday's bombing which killed 200 and injured 1,500 others. His conservative party had been projected to win the most seats in the 350-member Congress of Deputies, and maybe retain its outright majority.
Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's government initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA for the rail attack, even as evidence mounted of an Islamic link and the opposition accused the government of withholding information.
Then on Saturday night Interior Minister Angel Acebes announced the arrests of three Moroccans and two Indians and later disclosed the existence of a videotape in which a man speaking Arabic said Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror group claims responsibility for the rail blasts.
The videotape was recovered from a trash basket near a Madrid mosque, after an Arabic-speaking man called a Madrid TV station to say it was there, Acebes said.
"We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid," said the man on the video, according to a government translation of the statement delivered in Arabic. "It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies."
The man noted that the bombings came exactly 2 1/2 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US.
The news was broadcast on national TV and could sway the election.
Twenty people in the Basque city of Bilbao said early yesterday that recent events would not influence their vote. None would say which party they planned to vote for.
"I had already decided," said Maria Sonjuaisti, 42, "The attacks confirmed what I already had in mind."
Another voter in Madrid said he was upset by the attacks.
"It was the worst attack since the (1936-39) Civil War," said Angel Bueno, 51. "We want to know who is responsible for this massacre. It looks as if it was al-Qaeda. This shouldn't happen in Spain or the United States."
Spaniards including the main opposition candidate, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of the Socialist party, opposed last year's US-led invasion of Iraq, which Aznar endorsed. He later sent 1,300 peacekeeping troops.
Thousands of demonstrators gathered outside Popular Party headquarters in Madrid and other cities Saturday night demanding the truth about who carried out the bombing, and also shouting criticism of the government.
"No more cover-ups," read a banner carried by the protesters, who were being watched by riot police.
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