FBI FINDS LINK between 9/11 and the Madrid bombs:

The FBI has established the clearest link yet between the March 11 Madrid train bombings and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, a Spanish newspaper reported Sunday.

The FBI has told Spanish investigators that one of three men believed to have planned the Sept. 11 attacks from Spain in the summer of 2001 also gave the order to carry out the Madrid blasts, the newspaper ABC reported.

The train bombings killed 191 people and wounded 1,900 three days before a general election. In videotapes, the bombers claimed the attacks in the name of al Qaeda in Europe and said they were in revenge for Spain sending troops to Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites).

Investigators have long concluded that the Sept. 11 attacks were partially planned in Spain in July 2001.

Hijacker Mohammed Atta, believed to have piloted one of the airliners that crashed into New York's World Trade Center, visited Spain two months before the attacks and met two men.

One was Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, who is being held by U.S. authorities, while the other was unidentified.

ABC said investigators now believe that third man was the one who in December 2003 activated the Qaeda cell that carried out the March 11 attacks, which Spaniards call "our Sept. 11."

UPDATE. Captain Ed comments:

Not that this should surprise anyone, but one does have to question the effectiveness of Spanish cooperation in the war on terror if this third man still operated freely in Spain for thirty months after 9/11. The Aznar government provided the US strong political support for our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it appears that they never took the necessary steps to investigate al-Qaeda on their own soil. This isn't just a Spanish issue, either; Germany has been singularly ineffective in capturing and trying AQ operatives, and France hasn't found anyone except their traditional home-grown terrorists, the ETA Basque separatists.