28-09-2007, 14:43:20
Segunda entrega:
Let's now get to the nitty gritty details. Mr. Latona says that " The answer [to ETA involvement] is no, certainly not, but that doesn't mean there is no conspiracy"
That is, he rejects one of the typical conspiracy theories but accepts uncritically another, more outlandish conspiracy: police forces were somehow involved in a cover up, tampering with evidence and committing perjury.
Such serious accusations deserve scrutiny. Let's see the claims in detail. In Mr. Latona's words:
"testimony has made it clear that evidence was tampered with, reports by crime lab technicians altered, what looks like false evidence (a car and a backpack laced with the "right" kind of Type A dynamite) were presented to the investigating magistrate"
This is simply preposterous. Let's start with the simplest claim: "reports by crime lab technicians have been altered". False, false, FALSE. Not a single report presented in the trial has even been CLAIMED by any of the parts to have been altered, let alone proven so. What Mr. Latona is referring to is to a completely SEPARATE case, still on trial, in which a police lab chief allegedly altered a report. This case has no bearing on the 3/11 trial. As I have said, nobody even raised the issue during the trial. It was once or twice mentioned in passing, but no evidence was produced, no witnesses questioned, nothing.
Let's go into some detail. A white powdery substance is found in the house of one of the people indicted in the 3/11 trial (and also on a separate criminal investigation related to Islamist terrorism). It turns out to be quite harmless: boric acid, used as a cockroach insecticide and to remove bad odours. A lab technician boldly announces that, although he does not know what the substance might be used for, it is interesting to note that the very same substance was found in the house of one ETA member and one anarchist. The lab chief considers this part of the report is ridiculous, as the substance is harmless, and deletes it. We may discuss endlessly whether he did right or wrong (and we have, my position being that the head of a lab has the authority to remove wild speculation from the reports produced by his lab), but to jump from this irrelevancy to the conclusion that "reports by crime lab technicians have been altered" is ridiculous. None of the two judges involved in the original investigation has found any relevance in boric acid. It might as well had been toothpaste: a harmless commercial product.
Let's continue. Far from what Latona claims, testimony has NOT made clear any tampering. Quite the contrary. Lawyers from the defense were totally unable to poke any holes in the evidence presented by the prosecution, tried hard as they may with the enormous help of the pro-conspiracy agitprop media and some wayward particular prosecutors (in Spain an affected party can become part of a criminal trial) that supported the conspiracy theories in all of their flavours.
What is the source of the alleged tampering claims? Let's review the facts. Scarcely three hours after the facts a van (not a car as Latona claims) is found near a train station. Police was alerted to its presence by a common citizen (a janitor) who thought three people who were hanging around the van BEFORE the attacks were suspicious. Upon hearing that there had been a terrorist attack he decided to share his suspicions with the Police. Police from the nearby precinct round up the van, make a cursory inspection that includes explosive detection by dogs (which turns out to be negative), seal the van and send it off to the main Police unit in Madrid (all the time escorted by police from the precinct), where a detailed search is conducted, finding small traces of what Latona calls Type A explosive plus a very rare type of detonators, a cassette with Islamic chants from the Quran and DNA traces and fingerprints of some of the people from the Islamist cell, along with several belongings of the owner (the van was stolen).
So, what is the conspiracionist claim? That this evidence was planted by police in the main Police unit to lead to Islamist scapegoats.
The arguments conspiracionists use?
That policemen on the scene declared they inspected the van and that it was empty. This is simply false. The presiding judge of the tribunal made it very clear when a defense attorney tried to jump to conclusions cross-examining a policeman: "So you say the van was empty". "That is not what he is saying, counsel, he is saying that he saw nothing that drew his attention; you may like it more or less, but that is what he is saying". No policeman has ever come forward to support the conspiracionist claim that the van was empty.
The fact is that no search was undertaken in the place of origin: the only policeman inside the van spent a total of four or five seconds, according to his account, and only to unblock the shift stick, taking care, in his own words, not to touch anything. Besides, the explosive and detonators were found below the passenger seat, out of sight.
Conspiracionist manipulation rose to glorious heights when El Mundo, the leading conspiracionist newspaper, published a doctored photograph of the contents of the van, neatly arranged to take as much space as possible, and claimed it was a "reconstruction" of what the police officers should have seen. Just a step away from the National Enquirer. The same newspaper announced some time later that one policeman had spotted in the up-to-now empty van a business card of a respectable Basque company (which would, by some unexplained means, lead to the Basque terrorists of ETA!). It was later revealed that the business card was actually an audio cassette of the Mondragon Orchestra. Picture Mad Al Yankovich and you will understand what the Mondragon is about. That was the ETA link according to El Mundo. Obviously and justly, they became the laughingstock of the newspaper trade.
Besides, most of what was found in the van were the OWNER'S BELONGINGS. Were they not there when policemen allegedly claimed the van was empty? If they were not there, what sense does it make to remove those belongings only to plant them later? Since the van was stolen, nobody would have thought it strange to see those belongings disappear.
The second argument is of course the dogs: they were unable to detect the traces of explosive. But the fact is only one dog entered the load area of the vehicle, some distance from the bag containing the traces of explosive, and that dogs do have false negatives. We have two documented cases in Spain a few months before 3/11: Plaza de Colón and Zarautz graveyard. In both cases dogs were unable to detect pounds of explosives.
The third argument is the supposedly unexplained time it took the van to get from Alcalá where it was found to the Madrid central unit: around one hour. The actual trip is recorded in Internet road tools as taking around 35 min. Not only are we to believe that around 60 items of evidence were planted in less than half-an-hour; we are also asked to forget that that day, with no public transportation, the roads were collapsed, and that a tow truck usually takes more time than a car to reach a given destination.
Upon such flimsy foundations are conspiracy theories built.
But wait, it gets worse. According to Latona, the cover-up was after the fact. That is, contrary to what some of the wackiest conspiracy theories claim, Police was not involved in the actual attack, they only tried to cover it up for political advantage.
Wow. You have to admire the execution skills of these guys. They managed to find a stolen van less than three hours after the attacks; coax a citizen into falsely declaring he had seen it before the attacks; and plant evidence that lead to the authorship of their choice less than seven hours after said attacks, evidence that fits perfectly with hundreds of pieces of other evidence. They also identified the scapegoats immediately and were able to gather DNA and fingerprints to conveniently place them in the van. And of course, the decision to embark on such a risky adventure was taken in an instant, and the planning of this humongous operation took a few minutes. Yeah, right.
Did I forget to mention that the detonators were of a rare kind that led directly to the Asturias mine where the explosives were stolen, and that the conspirators of course had time not only to find those detonators but to alter cell phone records and witness testimonies (including one minor who has already been convicted of helping the illegal explosive deal and one of the people indicted in this trial) that squarely place one of the Islamists in that exact spot in Asturias BEFORE the attacks and that document the negotiation to buy the dynamite?
Of course there is a simpler explanation, as always. Occam's razor tells us that we should always prefer the simpler explanation, all other things being equal. And that explanation is of course: the evidence is real. It was not tampered with.
I will continue later.
Let's now get to the nitty gritty details. Mr. Latona says that " The answer [to ETA involvement] is no, certainly not, but that doesn't mean there is no conspiracy"
That is, he rejects one of the typical conspiracy theories but accepts uncritically another, more outlandish conspiracy: police forces were somehow involved in a cover up, tampering with evidence and committing perjury.
Such serious accusations deserve scrutiny. Let's see the claims in detail. In Mr. Latona's words:
"testimony has made it clear that evidence was tampered with, reports by crime lab technicians altered, what looks like false evidence (a car and a backpack laced with the "right" kind of Type A dynamite) were presented to the investigating magistrate"
This is simply preposterous. Let's start with the simplest claim: "reports by crime lab technicians have been altered". False, false, FALSE. Not a single report presented in the trial has even been CLAIMED by any of the parts to have been altered, let alone proven so. What Mr. Latona is referring to is to a completely SEPARATE case, still on trial, in which a police lab chief allegedly altered a report. This case has no bearing on the 3/11 trial. As I have said, nobody even raised the issue during the trial. It was once or twice mentioned in passing, but no evidence was produced, no witnesses questioned, nothing.
Let's go into some detail. A white powdery substance is found in the house of one of the people indicted in the 3/11 trial (and also on a separate criminal investigation related to Islamist terrorism). It turns out to be quite harmless: boric acid, used as a cockroach insecticide and to remove bad odours. A lab technician boldly announces that, although he does not know what the substance might be used for, it is interesting to note that the very same substance was found in the house of one ETA member and one anarchist. The lab chief considers this part of the report is ridiculous, as the substance is harmless, and deletes it. We may discuss endlessly whether he did right or wrong (and we have, my position being that the head of a lab has the authority to remove wild speculation from the reports produced by his lab), but to jump from this irrelevancy to the conclusion that "reports by crime lab technicians have been altered" is ridiculous. None of the two judges involved in the original investigation has found any relevance in boric acid. It might as well had been toothpaste: a harmless commercial product.
Let's continue. Far from what Latona claims, testimony has NOT made clear any tampering. Quite the contrary. Lawyers from the defense were totally unable to poke any holes in the evidence presented by the prosecution, tried hard as they may with the enormous help of the pro-conspiracy agitprop media and some wayward particular prosecutors (in Spain an affected party can become part of a criminal trial) that supported the conspiracy theories in all of their flavours.
What is the source of the alleged tampering claims? Let's review the facts. Scarcely three hours after the facts a van (not a car as Latona claims) is found near a train station. Police was alerted to its presence by a common citizen (a janitor) who thought three people who were hanging around the van BEFORE the attacks were suspicious. Upon hearing that there had been a terrorist attack he decided to share his suspicions with the Police. Police from the nearby precinct round up the van, make a cursory inspection that includes explosive detection by dogs (which turns out to be negative), seal the van and send it off to the main Police unit in Madrid (all the time escorted by police from the precinct), where a detailed search is conducted, finding small traces of what Latona calls Type A explosive plus a very rare type of detonators, a cassette with Islamic chants from the Quran and DNA traces and fingerprints of some of the people from the Islamist cell, along with several belongings of the owner (the van was stolen).
So, what is the conspiracionist claim? That this evidence was planted by police in the main Police unit to lead to Islamist scapegoats.
The arguments conspiracionists use?
That policemen on the scene declared they inspected the van and that it was empty. This is simply false. The presiding judge of the tribunal made it very clear when a defense attorney tried to jump to conclusions cross-examining a policeman: "So you say the van was empty". "That is not what he is saying, counsel, he is saying that he saw nothing that drew his attention; you may like it more or less, but that is what he is saying". No policeman has ever come forward to support the conspiracionist claim that the van was empty.
The fact is that no search was undertaken in the place of origin: the only policeman inside the van spent a total of four or five seconds, according to his account, and only to unblock the shift stick, taking care, in his own words, not to touch anything. Besides, the explosive and detonators were found below the passenger seat, out of sight.
Conspiracionist manipulation rose to glorious heights when El Mundo, the leading conspiracionist newspaper, published a doctored photograph of the contents of the van, neatly arranged to take as much space as possible, and claimed it was a "reconstruction" of what the police officers should have seen. Just a step away from the National Enquirer. The same newspaper announced some time later that one policeman had spotted in the up-to-now empty van a business card of a respectable Basque company (which would, by some unexplained means, lead to the Basque terrorists of ETA!). It was later revealed that the business card was actually an audio cassette of the Mondragon Orchestra. Picture Mad Al Yankovich and you will understand what the Mondragon is about. That was the ETA link according to El Mundo. Obviously and justly, they became the laughingstock of the newspaper trade.
Besides, most of what was found in the van were the OWNER'S BELONGINGS. Were they not there when policemen allegedly claimed the van was empty? If they were not there, what sense does it make to remove those belongings only to plant them later? Since the van was stolen, nobody would have thought it strange to see those belongings disappear.
The second argument is of course the dogs: they were unable to detect the traces of explosive. But the fact is only one dog entered the load area of the vehicle, some distance from the bag containing the traces of explosive, and that dogs do have false negatives. We have two documented cases in Spain a few months before 3/11: Plaza de Colón and Zarautz graveyard. In both cases dogs were unable to detect pounds of explosives.
The third argument is the supposedly unexplained time it took the van to get from Alcalá where it was found to the Madrid central unit: around one hour. The actual trip is recorded in Internet road tools as taking around 35 min. Not only are we to believe that around 60 items of evidence were planted in less than half-an-hour; we are also asked to forget that that day, with no public transportation, the roads were collapsed, and that a tow truck usually takes more time than a car to reach a given destination.
Upon such flimsy foundations are conspiracy theories built.
But wait, it gets worse. According to Latona, the cover-up was after the fact. That is, contrary to what some of the wackiest conspiracy theories claim, Police was not involved in the actual attack, they only tried to cover it up for political advantage.
Wow. You have to admire the execution skills of these guys. They managed to find a stolen van less than three hours after the attacks; coax a citizen into falsely declaring he had seen it before the attacks; and plant evidence that lead to the authorship of their choice less than seven hours after said attacks, evidence that fits perfectly with hundreds of pieces of other evidence. They also identified the scapegoats immediately and were able to gather DNA and fingerprints to conveniently place them in the van. And of course, the decision to embark on such a risky adventure was taken in an instant, and the planning of this humongous operation took a few minutes. Yeah, right.
Did I forget to mention that the detonators were of a rare kind that led directly to the Asturias mine where the explosives were stolen, and that the conspirators of course had time not only to find those detonators but to alter cell phone records and witness testimonies (including one minor who has already been convicted of helping the illegal explosive deal and one of the people indicted in this trial) that squarely place one of the Islamists in that exact spot in Asturias BEFORE the attacks and that document the negotiation to buy the dynamite?
Of course there is a simpler explanation, as always. Occam's razor tells us that we should always prefer the simpler explanation, all other things being equal. And that explanation is of course: the evidence is real. It was not tampered with.
I will continue later.
[A los creyentes] les competerá difundir lo que otros han acuñado; ya que ningún hombre suelta y expande la mentira con tanta gracia como el que se la cree.