| So much for buying the hard boyz off... |
A radical Muslim cell broken up by Spanish police had been plotting to bomb the National Court, a hub of Spain's investigations of Islamic terrorism, the interior minister said Tuesday. Seven suspects were arrested on Monday in Madrid and southern Spain, while one more was arrested Tuesday in the northern city of Pampalona, minister Jose Antonio Alonso said. "This was an operation against radical Muslims. They were planning to commit terrorist attacks," he told reporters at Parliament. "They were talking about attacking the National Court, a judicial body. But the police do rule out any other kind of possibility," Alonso said, adding that no explosives were found during the arrests.
The newspaper El Pais quoted police sources as saying the plot was only in the preliminary stages as there was no evidence that the suspects had obtained explosives. The arrests were made on the basis of wiretapped telephone conversations, it said. Another newspaper, El Mundo, reported that the plan involved detonating a truck containing 1,100 pounds of explosives outside the courthouse, located on a busy avenue in downtown Madrid. The arrests were ordered as part of a probe by the court's Judge Baltasar Garzon, Spain's leading anti-terrorism magistrate. Since September 2003, Garzon has indicted 41 people on terrorism charges, including Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida suspects accused of staging the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. |