officers, the forensics, the bomb squad, the vehicle removal men, were all in the vicinity of that first inspection of the van. Journalists do their job. The cameras were supposed to be kept away from the bodies of the children in the pre-school, but one guy found his way in there.’
‘As we’ve seen before,’ said Juan, breathing down his irritation, ‘it’s very difficult to dislodge first impressions from the public’s mind. There are still millions of Americans who believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible in some way for 9/11. Most of Seville will now believe that they have been the victim of an Islamic terrorist attack and we might not be able to come close to confirming the truth of the matter until we can get into the mosque, which could be days of demolition work away.’
‘Perhaps we should look at the unique circumstances which led to this event,’ said Falcón, ‘and also look at the future, to see if there’s anything that this bombing might be seeking to influence. From my own point of view, the reason I was very early on to the scene here was that I was at the Forensic Institute, discussing the autopsy of a body found on the main rubbish dump on the outskirts of Seville.’
Falcón gave the details of the unidentifiable corpse found yesterday.
‘This could, of course, be an unconnected murder,’ said Falcón. ‘However, it is unique in the crime history of Seville and it does not appear to be the work of a single person, but rather a group of killers, who have gone to extreme lengths to prevent identification.’
‘Have there been any other murders with similar attempts to prevent identification?’ asked Juan.
‘Not in Spain this year, according to the police computer,’ said Falcón. ‘We haven’t checked with Interpol yet. Our investigation is still very new.’
‘Are there any elections due?’
‘The Andalucían parliamentary elections last took place in March 2004,’ said Calderón. ‘The Town Hall elections were in 2003 so they are due next March. The socialists are currently in office.’
Juan took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket.
‘Before we left Madrid we had a call from the CGI, who had just been informed by the editor of the ABC that they had received a letter with a Seville stamp on the envelope. The letter consisted of a single sheet of paper and a printed text in Spanish. We have since discovered that this text comes from the work of Abdullah Azzam, a preacher best known as the leading ideologue of the Afghan resistance to the Russian invasion. It reads as follows:
‘“This duty will not end with victory in Afghanistan; jihad will remain an individual obligation until all other lands that were Muslim are returned to us, so that Islam will reign again: before us lie Palestine, Bokhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines, Burma, Southern Yemen, Tashkent…”’ he paused, looking around the room, ‘“and Andalucía.”’
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