Oleksandr Kladkovoy

Description

Oleksandr Kladkovoy used to refer to himself as Álex, because Spaniards found his real name so hard to pronounce. He had been married twice and had four children aged between 17 and 32. He lived at his sister’s house in the Santa Eugenia district. His most treasured possession was his bicycle, which had been his dream ever since he arrived in Madrid. On the morning of 11 March he was killed in the explosions at Santa Eugenia station.

11 March 2004 fell on a Thursday. Early that morning, a number of terrorists with links to Al-Qaeda planted thirteen bombs on four suburban trains covering routes running through Madrid. Ten of the bombs exploded between 7.37 and 7.39 am, when the trains were at Atocha, El Pozo and Santa Eugenia stations and alongside Calle Téllez. 191 people were killed in the attack and around 1,500 were wounded. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Spanish history. On 3 April 2004, agents from the Special Operations Group (GEO) were about to enter an apartment in Leganés where the perpetrators of the attacks were believed to be hiding when the terrorists detonated twenty kilograms of explosives in an act of collective suicide. The ensuing blast killed one of the officers, bringing the total number of people killed by the 11 March bombers to 192.

Images

Audio

Press