THE mastermind of the Madrid train bombings remains at large and security sources believe that he may be planning an attack in Britain during the general election.

Documents found in a Madrid flat used by some of the bombers show how their leader, Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, ordered them to strike in the final days of the Spanish election campaign last March. The coded command was sent three months earlier; Nasar left it to his lieutenants in Spain to decide what the target should be.

Fernando Reinares, Spain’s counter-terrorism director, said the documents showed that the bombing on the eve of the election was to be followed by suicide attacks. What spared more bloodshed was that the militant gang who were to stage these atrocities blew themselves up when cornered by police.

As the country prepares for a week of memorials to mark the first anniversary of Europe’s worst terror attack, Señor Reinares would not reveal the bombers’ other intended targets. But investigators say that Nasar’s messages mention other European countries, believed to include Britain. What concerns British security agencies is that Nasar lived in North London in the mid-1990s and has a record of leaving handpicked “sleeper” cells to await his instructions.

The US State Department recently named the Syrian-born Nasar as one of the five most dangerous al-Qaeda terrorists still at large and put a $5 million bounty on his head. At least four other key figures from the Madrid attack are still on the run.

The CIA has had reported sightings of Nasar in a dozen countries, including Britain, but the recent discovery of his Spanish wife, Elena, and their four children in Kuwait City led US agents to believe that Nasar may be hiding in Iraq.

Nasar is known to have had a long association with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is operating inside Iraq and who this week was urged by al-Qaeda leaders to spread his terror attacks to Europe and the US.

The evidence from Madrid last month prompted Sir Ian Blair, the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, to talk about the general election being a possible trigger for an attack.

Party rivalries in Spain’s parliamentary investigation into the March 11 atrocity mean that the full story of what happened is unlikely to be made public, although a majority of MPs are convinced the election was the catalyst for the attack.

José María Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister at the time, was a supporter of the Iraq war and an ally of President Bush, so the parallels with Britain are obvious. Al-Qaeda was quick to claim credit on its websites for Señor Aznar’s defeat, though Nasar and his followers could never have anticipated how clumsily the Spanish Prime Minister would handle the aftermath of the bombing by trying to blame Basque terrorists.

Investigators in Madrid are convinced that what they have uncovered in recent weeks shows how a British cell is likely to operate after Nasar’s tuition. His recruits are taught how to fake documents so that they are almost impossible to detect. Two of Nasar’s key players in the Madrid operation, both North African born and still on the run, had UK passports in the names of Frost and Burgess to make their travel easier. Nasar, who has a pale complexion, red hair and green eyes, often uses British identity documents.

In the investigation headquarters in Madrid, a diagram covers an entire wall demonstrating how more than 60 men, mainly of North African descent, played their parts in the bombing. One officer points out that many of these nameshad been in custody in Spain for their suspected links with Islamist militants.“If we had kept them locked up, 191 people would not have died,” the officer said. Another Spanish officer revealed that Nasar had close contact with at least two of the suspects held in Belmarsh prison.

THE NUMBERS

191 people were killed

1,800 were injured

10 bombs planted on four trains exploded between 07:39 and 07:42 in south Madrid.
In March 14 elections, the ruling People’s Party lost to the antiwar Socialist Party, taking only 148 seats to the Socialists’ 164
Polls taken before the attack suggested that the People’s Party would win with 168 to 173 seats

7 suspects committed suicide while surrounded by police on April 3

74 people were arrested over the attack, of which

22 have been jailed

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