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| Europe |
| Almallah helped Amer Azizi escape |
| 2005-03-22 |
| A suspect in the Madrid train bombings may have helped one of Spain's most wanted fugitives flee the country, a judge said on Tuesday. High Court Judge Juan del Olmo, leading the probe into the attacks a year ago that killed 191 people, said the suspect, Syrian-born Mouhannad Almallah Dabas, recruited Islamist holy warriors and was an expert at forging identity papers. "Documentation from the accused ... could have been used to help the Moroccan Amer El Azizi, a presumed important member of al Qaeda, escape from Spain," the judge wrote in a six-page order that remanded Almallah in custody. Another judge in 2003 charged Azizi with belonging to al Qaeda, and his name has come up in the investigation into the Madrid bombings, in which 10 bombs exploded aboard four commuter trains three days before a general election. More than 40 people, mostly of North African origin, are in jail or under court supervision in the case. Investigators say Azizi attended al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion, and he was one of 35 people charged together with belonging to al Qaeda, among them Osama bin Laden. Almallah was arrested in Madrid on Friday for the second time in the train bombings investigation, one day before his brother was arrested in London in the same probe. Almallah's defence lawyer said the accused may have chosen to associate with the wrong people but did not know of any criminal activity and that if he were guilty he would have tried to evade police, the court order said. Almallah was arrested two weeks after the Madrid attacks but let go for lack of evidence. Police later considered him to have established suspicious contacts in North Africa and the Middle East, the court order said. Almallah also created a political stir in Spain because after he got out of jail last year he joined the ruling Socialist party, which won a general election held three days after the bombings of March 11, 2004. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |