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Spain holds half of the 3/11 cell
Spanish investigators believe that they have identified the core group of Islamic militants who carried out the deadly train bombings in Madrid this month and that more than half of those involved are now in custody, a senior Spanish official said Friday. Investigators are still trying to determine who was behind the plot, which was carried out by eight or nine Moroccan extremists who operated primarily in Spain and Morocco, the official said. The assessment came as Spain announced it had provisionally charged another Moroccan in connection with the attacks, bringing to 12 the number of people who have been formally accused of involvement in the bombings on March 11, which killed 190.The fast-moving investigation has focused on a network of Moroccan extremists that also had ties to Islamic militant cells elsewhere in Europe. Moroccan officials said they, too, had detained several people, while the German police raided an apartment in Darmstadt where one of the Moroccans arrested in Spain this week lived briefly. The Spanish official said one of the major suspects still at large was a Moroccan militant who had spent time in Turkey in recent years and had been sought before the bombings in connection with a Qaeda cell that operated in Spain. A witness who survived the bombings has identified a photograph of the Moroccan, whose name was not disclosed, as someone who had been on board one of the four commuter trains that was destroyed, officials said. So far, the primary Spanish suspect in the case is a man arrested on suspicion of providing the terrorists with explosives that were apparently stolen from a mine or quarry in the northern Spanish province of Asturias. The Spaniard had previously been convicted on drug charges, officials said, and he was believed to have met a Moroccan in prison who was related to one of the suspects in the bombings. Several of the Moroccans arrested have ties to militants who had been identified in various countries as members of Al Qaeda. Some of those militants have also been blamed for a series of suicide bombings in Casablanca last year that killed more than 40 people, including 12 terrorists. Moroccan officials said they were investigating several people in the country's impoverished north, a region once administered by Spain. They said some had been taken into custody but denied a newspaper report that one of the men had been found in possession of maps of the Madrid train stations that figured in the attacks. Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan cellphone salesman in Madrid, who was one of the first people arrested in the attacks, may have helped to coordinate the operation but apparently did not directly take part in the bombings, a Spanish official said. Mr. Zougam first came to the attention of French officials in 2000, as they investigated David Courtallier, a French convert to Islam who spent time in Afghanistan and is now being tried on charges of planning terrorist attacks in Europe. After his return from Afghanistan in 1998, Mr. Courtallier visited Islamic militants in London who gave him contacts in Spain and Morocco. Among those he later met were Mr. Zougam in Madrid and another militant, Abdelaziz Benyaich, the French official said. Armed with evidence of contacts between Mr. Courtallier and Mr. Zougam, France urged Spain to detain Mr. Zougam for questioning and to search his apartment in 2000. It was only after pressing the country for a year that French officials succeeded in having Mr. Zougam questioned and his home searched. "The Spanish weren't interested because they had not found evidence of his own involvement in a terrorist cell plotting against Spain," the French official said. Spanish officials said they simply did not have sufficient cause to charge Mr. Zougam. Mr. Zougam had met with Mr. Benyaich in Tangier shortly before leaving Morocco on April 20, the officials say. After the Casablanca bombings, Moroccan officials identified Mr. Benyaich as a senior Qaeda operative who easily moved around Europe on a French passport and plotted terrorist attacks in northern Morocco and France. After the Casablanca attacks, Moroccan investigators searching the home of Mr. Benyaich in Tangier found a cellphone that had been tampered with to make a detonator. They now believe that Mr. Benyaich was the source of the cellphone detonator design used in Madrid. Mr. Benyaich fled to Spain after the attacks and was arrested there late last year. One of his brothers, Salaheddin, was arrested in Morocco and later convicted of helping to plan the Casablanca attacks. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-03-27 |
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