I've been covering this for a bit now. Huarte is - believe it or not - a member of Spanish intelligence. Check these links for more.

Now I'm no conspiracy theorist...

You haven't read all the info yet. Among other things, Huarte owns an Asturian mining business...

(For those who don't get the 'no shit?' implication, the 3/11 bombs were made from explosives stolen from an Asturian mine.)

Much obliged, Colt.

I need to follow this a lot closer, it just kind of jumped out at me that Huarte had been meeting with one of Lamari's flunkies.

Here's a recent bit of news:

Joan Puig, spokesman for the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC, leftist separatists) on the March 11 investigating commission, yesterday warned the PSOE that "there is no need for the committee to hurry to make its conclusions." Though ERC is opposed to the direct testimony of Fernando Huarte and Abdelkrim Benesmail, they said they would be willing "for now" for the commission to hear recordings of the prison conversations between PSOE member Huarte and Islamist terrorist and March 11 conspirator Benesmail in 2002 and 2004.

I need to follow this a lot closer, it just kind of jumped out at me that Huarte had been meeting with one of Lamari's flunkies.

No kidding. Checking in with the guy every year or so? That's not frequent enough for 'pleasure', which leaves business. Was he acting in the capacity of an agent of CNI, a member of the PSOE, or as a private citizen?

Well I going to venture an off-the-wall guess here that this "Spanish Palestinian Support Organization" he headed wasn't exactly opposed to the whole idea of Islamic extremism, at least so far as it was directed against Israelis. Throw that together with the meetings, the other intriguing (to say the least) points you mentioned, and it looks to hell as though there's more going on here then is generally understood.

Leftist helping killers and supporting terrorism ? say it aint so !

When Canadas Martin heaps acolades on killers. Like Libya's socialist maximum ruler, how is it any diffferent.. the lefts dependable support of Arafat, a marxist creation of the kgb.

The left have been murdering people en mass and en small since the left has existed, and terror buth direct and by proxy has been their tool since day one.

Nice to see more proof come out, but it isnt anything new, unexpected, or anything but commonplace.

this "Spanish Palestinian Support Organization" he headed wasn't exactly opposed to the whole idea of Islamic extremism, at least so far as it was directed against Israelis.

Or Algerians. Or Frenchmen, given what that cell was doing.

Another man involved in 3/11 was a PSOE member, too.

The collaboration to cover things up is worrying, too:

Mr. Huarte, as Libertad Digital exposed, is a prosperous mining businessman who often travels to Brazil. Fortunately, for his peace of mind, he has two Asturian buddies in Madrid to manage matters while he is away. Those two are none other than Álvaro Cuesta (member of PSOE’s executive committee) and Gaspar Llamazares (head of the Communist Party (IU) in Spain).

Cuesta is in charge of the 3/11 commission.

Incidentally, if Benesmail was an intelligence source/contact of Huarte's, why isn't there a record of them meeting immediately (or at least soon after) 3/11? If you have a contact in the GIA, surely talking to the guy in the wake of 200 murdered Spaniards would be worth the trip?

I knew Huarte owned the Asturian mining business, just hadn't heard about his connections to Benesmail (which is actually bin Ismail, ain't Romanizing Arabic fun?) or this Palestinian solidarity group until now. Interesting tidbit there about Huarte making frequent trips to Brazil, as there are reputed to be al-Qaeda (and Hezbollah, Hamas, and the rest of the usual villain's gallery) cells active there.

Good point about there being no record of Huarte meeting with Benesmail right after 3/11. This also adds a new dimension to the mass suicide of Lamari and Fakhet (the other major 3/11 mastermind). We know they killed themselves rather than be taken prisoner, but it also raises the question of what all they were trying to keep investigators from finding out.

Continuing in that vein, anybody know how Huarte and his pals feel about Spanish involvement in Afghanistan? Remember, the video that was found in the rubble of the building where Lamari and Fakhet blew themselves up said they were going to attack Spain again if they didn't pull their troops out of Afghanistan as well as Iraq. A lot of European leftists didn't like the idea of committing troops to Afghanistan to begin with (that whole icky military thing), and it'd be mighty curious to learn Huarte's views on that subject.

This is from a cop who interviewed two guys believed to have stolen the explosives:

Francisco Javier Lavandera, a former police agent under a witness protection program until a few days ago, claimed that Antonio Toro and Suárez Trashorras, charged with providing the explosives used in the March 11 bombings, "behaved calmly as if they were supported by someone very powerful".

Note: these were not ETA or A-Q members.

IRT Huarte's feelings on Afghanistan, given the palestinian solidarity thing, the GIA meetings... I think we can infer a certain amount. But obviously evidence would be better :-)

Some points:

The latest news (monday) from El Mundo newspaper put Benesmail over Lamari in the command chain. Lamari was the crazy terrorist, a paranoic that keep in touch with his fellows calling them from different public telephone boxes and never using a mobile phone. Based on the damage in his remains, he probably activated the bomb that blew up many of them in the Leganes appartment. Nevertheless, Benesmail, in jail, keeps informed reading newspapers and discusses with ETA members tactics on terrorism, as he maintains contacts with a high level Socialist party member and with ETA bloodthirsty gunman Henry Parot, a non-muslim french born in Algiers. His profile matches better than anyone else arrested yet as coordinator of 3/11, (as well as Lamari's as the leader of the cell, the pieces of the puzzle begin to fit).

It seems that Huarte is rather a collaborator than an agent of the Spanish Secret Services (CNI). Probably the Socialist government wants to increase the importance of his post in order to include his activities under the Official Secrets Law, thus avoiding his appareance before the 3/11 commission. Huarte met undisturbed Benesmail, even after 3/11, because all the attention was focused on Al Qaeda, and Benesmail was trained in the GIA. Only after informations pointed towards him as organizer of a new plot against the Spanish High Court (that judges terrorism) using explosives that were to be bought from ETA, Benesmail was "detained" (he was in jail) again and indicted with new charges.

The Explosives Plot, as it is called in Spain, includes all the operations, mostly carried out by Spaniards (that is, pretty Christian) related to the obtaining of explosives and detonators used in 3/11. It seems that it is even gloomier, as agent Campillo, from the Civil Guard, pointed out:

Jesus Campillo also sends a message to his superiors in the Civil Guard: " Why don't they look for other recordings? For example, the one that the lieutenant Montero recorded when Lavandero went to the [Distric Command] of Gijón to ratify [what he had said] ". In addition, other agents of the Civil Guard have denounced that general [Civil Guard is a paramilitary force] Pedro Laguna denied a workgroup that at the beginning of year 2003 - a year before the attacks of 11-M- tried to investigate on complete time the Asturian plot of the explosives, taking care of the denunciations of at least four informers (Lavandero, El Nayo, Zouhier and a fourth whom still the name is not known).

As I write this, more news are coming about radical Islamists, Islamic associations, ETA and the Socialists.

Anybody knowledgeable on the Spanish political scene want to give us more background on Huarte?

Sure, as published in the Asturian newspaper La Nueva España:

Fernando Huarte, worker of Izar-Gijón, [public shipyards] was member of the executive commission of the PSOE [Spanish Socialists] of Gijón until January of 2001. Since then it is member of the municipal committee of the PSOE and in charge of the security of the most important socialist acts in the city [thus a trustworthy member of the party, probably with links to the security forces of that city]. The party has chosen him to be one of the representatives of the City council of Gijón in the general assembly of Cajastur [regional bank, a lucrative post]. He has made trips to different countries in the Middle East. In 1981 he knew in Beirut Yasser Arafat.

Background in which Huarte evolved, published in LD:

According to many connoisseurs of the Asturian social reality, the number of the conversions in the zone responds to a kind of Arab popular front-ism rather secular and pertaining to the communist orbit of the extinct Soviet Union. It explains the old militancy in the Spanish Communist Party of many of which now feel united by the Palestine flag.

Asturias is a mining region in norther Spain where Trade-unionism and Socialism is especially virulent, incubated in the predominant and often inefficient public heavy industries.

Yusuf Fernandez comes, like present Asturian president Vicente Alvarez Areces, of the rows of the Communist Party and the schism of Perlora, Asturian town in which a critical current against Gerardo Iglesias [the Communist leader then] was formed. From there, they happened to the PSOE [Socialist Party] and others remained off-hooked, protected in the Koran and sunk in Asturian or Basque leftist radical movements that get along with a common cause: Palestine.

From my point of view, the collapse of Communism left all these people without any supreme achievement to justify his way of thinking (and, sometimes, the public subsidies they receive). Now the ideology of radical Islam is an answer. They finally have found some guys that hate the classic-liberal world that won the Cold War as much as they do. What was signed in Asturias is the alliance between the old European Totalitarism, (that has many faces: Nationalism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism...) and the new rising totalitarian force of Islam.

The Spaniards were smart to opt out of George W. Bush's global rampage.

...and opt-in to Al-Qaeda's, it seems.

The Spaniards were smart to opt out of George W. Bush's global rampage.

A week before the elections the polls showed that the Spaniards were smart enough to vote majoritarily for the pro-American and pro-Bush right wing party, thus the need to kill 192 people and severely injury 152 more on 3/11.

What happened 3/11 and 3/14, the day of the elections, and how the Spaniards were manipulated is explained here

They were not smart then, they were just frightened. Is this democracy?

The philosopher Karl Popper had ample reason to propose a precise definition of democracy. Democracy, he said, is a means to remove those in power without bloodshed. Popper's preferred method, of course, was the ballot box.