|
Spanish mall was a terrorist target
TERRORISTS who blew themselves up last weekend as rather than be arrested in connection with the Madrid train bombings had been plotting an attack on a sprawling shopping centre outside Madrid. Police combing through the apartment found evidence that included maps of Parquesur, a retail and leisure complex less than a mile (1.6km) from the apartment in the town of Leganes, El Mundo newspaper said, quoting police. The police also found at least two backpacks and a belt, all packed with dynamite and wired to detonators, the paper said. Interior Ministry officials were not available to comment on the report. El Mundo said the attack was to have been staged on Sunday - the day after the police raid that prompted up to seven terrorists to take their own lives - or during the week before Easter, when millions of Spaniards are on vacation and schools are out, making the crowds that normally pack Parquesur even larger. The facility has 193 stores, a hotel and a 2500-seat multi-cinema. Another newspaper, El Pais, said four days before the March 11 attacks, police acting on a tip-off from neighbours visited the rural house 30km south-east of Madrid where officials say the bombs used in the railway attacks were assembled. But police did not go into the house because they lacked a court order, and instead just jotted down the license plate numbers of cars parked outside, the paper said. Neighbours had called the police because a heavily overloaded car arrived at the house and they thought it might be carrying drugs or stolen goods, El Pais said. Key suspects still at large include Amer Azizi, a Moroccan charged with terrorism in the indictment handed by Judge Baltasar Garzon last September against members of an alleged Spain-based al-Qaeda cell that he says helped prepare the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Garzon describes Azizi as the right-hand man of reputed cell leader Imad Yarkis in their campaign to recruit young Muslim men and send them to training camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Indonesia. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-04-08 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=30029 |