Everyone shoud take notice of three facts: the "Cordoba" mosque they want to set up at Ground Zero in New York, the requirement that the Spanish city and the entire Al Andalus are Muslim, and its relation to the Madrid bombings of March 11, 2004, planned before September 11th 2001.

The nearly 200 dead in Madrid massacres are not related to the Spanish participation in Afghanistan or Iraq, as noted in "El País" one of the most authoritative voices on global jihadism, Fernando Reinares, Dean of the University Rey Juan Carlos, and advisor to the Interior and the intelligence agencies of different countries.

Reinares just written with Ignacio Cembrero, a specialist in North Africa, that in early summer 2001, two months before the attack on the Twin Towers, Amer Azizi, a member of Al Qaeda training in Afghanistan turned to commit massive attacks in Spain, where he had residence, calling for an Islamic reconquest of Al Andalus.

Immediately after the police broke up the 11/S cell, but he fled first to Iran and then to Afghanistan. He was killed in 2005 by a U.S. missile.

The article surprisingly, as if it was from another context, misses the May 2002 bombing at the House of Spain in Casablanca, which resulted in 41 deaths, and the conflict of "the Perejil Island", two months later. Both cases occurred a year before sending Spanish troops to Iraq in summer 2003.

After the massacres of March 11, 2004, the victory of Zapatero and the erroneous attribution of the attack on the Spanish presence in Iraq took place.

Yes, pay attention: there is a growing Muslim dream related to Al Andalus. That dream is now supercharged by the installation in the triumph for Islamist imaginary, Ground Zero, of the Cordoba mosque.

And Cordoba, the Spanish city, is a false multiculturalist myth, terrible for the unfaithful in times of Islam. Much more bloody and brutal than any current Saudi city, whatever is said now by the actual Moorish and the current U.S. ambassador to Madrid, driven by the ignorance of Obama's Cairo speech fifteen months ago.

Tribune: Fernando Reinares and Ignacio Cembrero: Was Spain an AQ target before Sept. 11?

In early summer 2001, when Amer Azizi (left) returned to Spain from Afghanistan, the decision to attack our country had been taken. So, was really the participation in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the trigger for the attack?

11/09/2010 - It's no wonder that the Spanish people, as Europeans generally, link the threat that international terrorism poses to Western society with the involvement of their governments in military interventions in countries whose populations are predominantly Muslim. But their countries maintain troops in these countries carrying on work of various kinds.

When assessing the inherent threat posed that global Islamist-inspired violence, the circumstances must be weighed. They are mixed national politics, with foreign affairs side, with typical dimensions of security and defense. But not necessarily those constitute the decisive factor -perhaps not even the most important one- of those which should be taken into account. There are other relevant factors, such as the underlying ideology to the phenomenon of terrorism or other certain issues which are best understood considering the domestic policy.

People continue to take for granted that what really put Spain in sight of Al Qaeda were two factors. First, the highly visible alignment of La Moncloa (NOTE: the Government) with the White House and Downing Street in the decision to invade Iraq, which is reflected graphically in the well known photo of the Azores. Second, the deployment of Spanish soldiers in Iraq from August 2003, just five months after U.S. and British troops begin military actions that concluded, provisionally, with the capture of Baghdad.

The Spanish mission lasted until shortly after the attacks of March 11, 2004 in Madrid and the subsequent change of party in government after the general elections held three days after that infamous date. In fact, March 11 bombings have been and continue to be interpreted primarily as a result of pre-positioning of the Popular Party Executive on the issue of Iraq and the military involvement in this protracted conflict.

However, it is also reasonable to think that Spain was already the target of the wrath of Osama Bin Laden and his followers prior to the invasion of Iraq and the dispatch of Spanish troops there. Maybe we were AQ's target since 2002, when a contingent of our army began its participation in the peacekeeping mission carried out by NATO in Afghanistan within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

In some of his communications, the March 11th terrorists themselves alluded to it and justified the decision attacking again when they saw that a withdrawal from Afghanistan was not contemplated. Police foiled the plan to locate the apartment rented by the jihadist cell in Leganes in which seven of its members blew themselves up on 3 April 2004, trying to cause maximum damage.

Nearly four years later, a Pakistani Taliban organization associated with al Qaeda named Therik-e-Taliban (NOTE: among other leaders, we can name Baitullah Mehsud, killed by a US drone last year, and Hakimullah Mehsud, who was also reported killed thanks to another US drone. It seems its leader now is Malik Noor Jamal, alias Maulana Toofan) acknowledged being behind the failed suicide attack on the subway in Barcelona in January 2008 after preparing a number of individuals convicted by the High Court. The Pakistani Taliban then referred to Spain's role in Afghanistan.

There are, however, reasons to believe that Spain became a prime target for al Qaeda before 2002, when our troops were deployed in Afghanistan. More specifically, it is possible that the desire to perpetrate a major attack on Spanish territory goes back no less than the fall of 2001. It was then that an Al Qaeda cell had been established in Spain since the mid-nineties, cell which was dismantled by the police. Most of its members, including the then leader of it, known by his nickname Abu Dahdah (photo), was jailed.

It is no coincidence that among the individuals who played key roles in the terrorist network of March 11th bombings, there were some who were closely related to that core jihadist, but for one reason or another were not arrested in the operation which disrupted the said cell. That operation was precipitated by the links the Spanish cell maintained with Hamburg, ie with the Sept 11's terrorists. Abu Dahdah and his followers had already long been the subject of police and judicial investigations by Spanish authorities as well as by those of other European countries and worldwide.

But now there are new reasons to suspect that Al Qaeda put Spain in sight and not before the invasion of Iraq occurred in 2003 or by sending Spanish troops to Afghanistan in 2002, but before cell that had formed in our country are substantially dismantled by police in the fall of 2001, two months after the attacks on New York and Washington. Moreover, even before the same Sept 11.

This information comes from a revealing document prepared by the Fajr Center for News Production, document which was reported during the last quarter of last year by Tauhid Press through various Jihadist Internet portals. The document, written in Arabic language by a reporter allowed Al Qaeda using his nickname Abu Ubayd al Maqdisi, is part of a series on the "Maghreb martyrs in the distant land of the Hindu Kush", referring to the prominent al-Qaeda militants from Morocco who have died in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

This is the fifth installment of the aforementioned series, devoted entirely to Amer Azizi, a Moroccan who was a prominent member of al-Qaeda cell in Spain, the one who had Abu Dahdah as lieutenant. This guy dodged the police operation that dismantled the cell in November 2001 and fled to Afghanistan after passing through Iran.

El País exclusively published on December, 17, 2009, that Amer Azizi died on the morning of December 1, 2005, as a result of a missile from an unmanned U.S. aircraft against an enclave near the administrative capital of Waziristan North (right. He noted also that he was then serving as number two of Hamza Rabia, responsible for the actions of Al Qaeda in Europe and North America, who was killed in the attack which was the main objective. However, this document, whose existence El País has also published on May 8, 2010, not only confirmed that Amer Azizi was Hamza Rabia's deputy when March 11th bombings took place. It also tells us that this former member of the al-Qaeda's cell in Spain did and wanted to do before Sept 11.

Although this information is now among other documents in the preliminary proceedings by the High Court due to the dismantling of that cell, the text signed by Abu Ubayd al Maqdisi confirms that before the Sept 11, Amer Azizi was in training camps in Afghanistan. But what those documents don't tell but appears among the Jihadist writings, is that after a few months "with those who were in charge of training camps where he stayed", he returned to Spain "with the hope of carrying out a jihadist action in the usurped the land", referring to al-Andalus, the islamized Spain.

Moreover, "once in the Crusader Spain, he began preparing, along with other companions of jihad, targets of the Crusaders to hit". But, as related in the document, "Spanish intelligence services soon arrested most members of the jihadist cell, which coincided with the blessed (¡!) attacks in New York and Washington". It is clear, then, that Spain was the target of Al Qaeda before Sept 11th. In early summer 2001, when Amer Azizi returned to Spain from Afghanistan, the decision to prepare an attack on Spanish soil had been taken.

Fernando Reinares is Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and Ignacio Cembrero is a reporter for El País.