Mohamed Itaiben

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Mohamed Itaiben lived in Azuqueca de Henares (Guadalajara), where he taught Arabic to the children of immigrants at the town’s mosque. He had come to Spain three years earlier to earn money to help his family. He had 14 siblings, one of whom had hepatitis. Although he had a degree in language and literature from the University of Fez and spoke Arabic, French and Spanish, he was working as a bricklayer in order to send money home to his family.

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.

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