The New Spymasters: Inside Espionage from the Cold War to Global Terror by Grey Stephen

Author:Grey, Stephen [Grey, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241973028
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2015-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

The secret cable said Mota revealed this at a US–Spain working group on terrorism and organized crime. He had explained that Spanish law ‘allows for security services officials to remain undercover’, concealing – in other words, lying about – their true identity and affiliation ‘while testifying in court’. Previous embassy reports, said the cable, had pointed out F1’s ‘sworn testimony’ that he was a ‘former member of the cell who turned on his colleagues and notified authorities of the plot’ and ‘that he has been a member of Al-Qaida since 2005’, forming part of their finance network. In contradiction to what Asim said in open court, the cable stated that ‘the judges were aware that the witness was an undercover agent rather than an al-Qaida member’. 25

If the cable was true and Asim had lied, then in their quest to protect the source, the authorities may have also denied the alleged plotters a reasonable defence. Without being informed of Asim’s background, it was hard for them to challenge the reliability of his account. And little convincing evidence was presented besides his testimony. ‘There are real doubts about his case,’ Antonio Baquero, the Spanish journalist, said. ‘I’m not sure anyone did the job well here.’ As the defence had pointed out in the trial, the police had found no explosives – just a few bits of wire and batteries and powder taken from fireworks. The most suspicious items were eight grams of nitrocellulose with particles of potassium perchlorate (also called ‘flash powder’) from the fireworks, the timers and 783 pellets from an air gun. (However murderous the potential intention, it hardly seemed a recipe for a serious attack.) The Spanish police believed that the real cache of explosives was never found, but they also distrusted Asim. Despite his emphatic testimony about plans for an imminent attack, prosecutors themselves admitted the bomb-makers must have been some way away from completing their work.

During the trial, Roshan Jamal Khan, an Indian businessman who was arrested and later convicted as a member of the cell, insisted that he had come to Spain to source supplies of olive oil to export to Bombay. While he was a member of Tablighi Jamaat and worshipped at the mosque, he said he hardly knew the others who were arrested and knew nothing of a bomb plot. Tablighi Jamaat was a peaceful group, he insisted. ‘It was very funny. We were going to spread love with people. Nobody expected suicide, making explosions of killing people.’ 26

Khan said that he had lived all his life in India and had never heard of the Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. His family in Bombay later claimed, ‘It was only on the basis of a fantasy of a wannabe James Bond that it was surmised that a terror attack was imminent on the Barcelona metro. Thus, the police supposedly got into the act to foil it.’ 27

Two men had been arrested in the raids but were released without charge; they insisted on the innocence of the others.

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