{"id":813,"date":"2004-03-29T06:38:25","date_gmt":"2004-03-29T11:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/03\/another_terrorist_nearmiss\/"},"modified":"2004-03-29T06:38:25","modified_gmt":"2004-03-29T11:38:25","slug":"another_terrorist_nearmiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/03\/another_terrorist_nearmiss\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Terrorist Near-Miss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Terrorists don&#8217;t seem to be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2004\/03\/29\/wspain29.xml&#038;sSheet=\/portal\/2004\/03\/29\/ixportal.html&#038;secureRefresh=true&#038;_requestid=96642\">very good drivers<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Spanish police were agonisingly close to foiling the Madrid train bombings, it was disclosed yesterday.<br \/>\nA car carrying the explosives used in the March 11 massacre was stopped by police but its Arab driver was fined only for a minor traffic offence, it was reported.<br \/>\nThe boot of the Volkswagen was packed with 220 lb of industrial dynamite being transported to Madrid after it had been stolen from a coal mine at Aviles in northern Spain during the last week of February, the El Pais newspaper said.<br \/>\nThe car, which had been stolen, was stopped by two Civil Guard patrolmen near Benavente, in the province of Leon, north of Madrid.<br \/>\nBut their suspicions were not aroused when they checked the car&#8217;s registration as the owner had not yet reported it missing. They failed to recognise that the driver was not the registered owner.<br \/>\nThe driver was fined for a minor infringement and allowed to drive on. Three of the four bombing suspects are thought to have been in the car.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wonder how the exchange between the police and the driver.  Either the latter is a cool player and eluded suspicion, or the police officer missed signals which could have prompted him (or her) to investigate the driver further.  As I recall, the millennium terrorist plot was busted because a border agent detained a driver who was acting suspiciously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/03\/another_terrorist_nearmiss\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Another Terrorist Near-Miss\"><p>Terrorists don&#8217;t seem to be very good drivers: Spanish police were agonisingly close to foiling the Madrid train bombings, it was disclosed yesterday. A car carrying the explosives used in the March 11 massacre was stopped by police but its Arab driver was fined only for a minor traffic offence, it was reported. The boot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}