MADRID, 30 November 2004 — Former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said yesterday that Islamic militants had tried to use the Madrid train bombings to oust the pro-US ruling party from power, but not because of its support for the Iraq war.

“These attacks were being prepared long before the Iraq war. They were not the result of the Iraq war even though many people said so,” Aznar said in combative testimony to a parliamentary commission probing the attacks.

The March 11 bombings aboard four packed commuter trains killed 191 people and wounded 1,900 three days before a general election, and Aznar’s mistaken placing of blame on the Basque separatist movement ETA was widely believed to have helped the anti-war Socialist opposition on polling day.

Had ETA been responsible, it could have helped Aznar in the election by seeming to justify his hard line against the group.

The Madrid bombers — mostly North Africans who investigators say were waging a holy war against the West — made videotapes claiming the attacks in the name of Al-Qaeda in Europe and said they were seeking revenge for Spain’s dispatch of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Aznar, making the first appearance by a former premier in a parliamentary investigation, was not pressed on the bombers’ own explanation of their motives.

Statements by those who carry out attacks are not given credibility in Spain, which has battled ETA for over 30 years.

Aznar, defending his political legacy before the commission, chose not to seek a third term in the March 14 election and picked his protege, Mariano Rajoy, as the conservative Popular Party’s candidate for the premiership.

Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero defeated Rajoy and on taking office immediately made good on his campaign promise to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.

“I am absolutely convinced, as I have said before, that the March 11 attacks sought not only a large number of victims. They sought to overturn the electoral situation in Spain,” Aznar said in lengthy testimony, still under way six hours after he began.

Aznar, who enjoyed unrivalled political prestige at his peak just before the attacks, accused unnamed political opponents of taking advantage of the tragedy for political gain. “I was trying to find out the truth and arrest the criminals while others were taking advantage to try to win the elections,” he said of the days between the attacks and the election.

He defended his decision initially to blame the train bombings on ETA and said his political opponents had yet to turn up a “smoking gun” to prove that his government lied.

Aznar testified repeatedly that police commanders all believed ETA was the prime suspect until the election eve.

“My conscience is clear...we told the truth about what we knew,” he said.

“Whether you like it or not, various intelligence services in the world were going over their data for hours and hours — days — and they didn’t find anything (pointing to Islamic militants),” Aznar said of his conversations with other European leaders on the day of the attacks.

ETA has killed some 850 people during a 36-year-old campaign for Basque independence and tried to bomb trains at Christmas last year. Suspected ETA members were caught driving 500 kg of explosives to Madrid shortly before the vote.

The parliamentary commission aims to offer a public account of the most devastating attack in modern Spanish history and is separate from a criminal investigation.

Some 30 people are in custody or under court supervision for the train bombings, one minor has been convicted, seven prime suspects are dead, and two or three others remain at large.