WHO, AND WHY, kept that information away from the appropriate law enforcement service?

A political row over the al-Qa'eda train bombings in Madrid was rekindled yesterday after it emerged that a police informer had issued a warning three months before that Islamist terrorists were plotting the massacre.

The Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, which came to power three days after the attacks, accused its centre-Right predecessor of "lies" and a "monumental lack of foresight" after the information emerged when security services documents were made public by the judge in charge of the case, Juan del Olmo.

The informant, who is under police protection, told the judge in April last year that he heard from his Moroccan-born brother-in-law, a cannabis dealer, that "Moroccans who traffic drugs'' were "going to put bombs on the trains''.

He said he had passed that information on to his police controller three months before the four bombs killed 191 people and wounded 1,500 on March 11 last year.

Zapatero and his government accuse Aznar's administration of lies and monumental lack of foresight because Aznar thought ETA was the author; the Socialists told they knew it was an attack by Islamic terrorists from minute one. In that case, why are they refusing any more testimonies before the parliamentary investigation of March 11?

One would think that it would be Aznar's Popular Party the one to try to close the commission ASAP for fear of getting more egg in the face, if they indeed knew that the authors were Islamic from the beginning. However, it's the Socialist party who is trying to shut down the commission's works when there's still big question marks about who new what and when: Aznar and his people claim that Socialist-friendly law enforcement officers kept that information away from the chain of command and gave it to key Socialist officials first. Coupled with disinformation disseminated via the Socialists' virtual house organ, the PRISA media group (no. 1 in TV, radio and newspapers) -such as the alleged existence of suicide bombers in the trains according to three sources in the police, which has been proven to be false- they created the impression that the government was lying, when actually they were kept in the dark on crucial details of the investigation, and some false information was planted (i.e. the suicide bombers) to make the public think that the government hadn't talked about them because they were hiding it.

So, take this new development, mix it with this and this, and it certainly makes you wonder. For the record, I'm not accusing the Socialist party of having a hand in the attacks, but of using them at their own electoral advantage, four days before the general polls.