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| Europe |
| Spain arrests 20 al-Qaeda recruiters |
| 2006-01-11 |
| The Spanish police arrested 20 people on Tuesday in connection with a recruiting network that, according to the Interior Ministry, sent Islamic militants to join the insurgency in Iraq. One of those militants was an Algerian suspected of killing 19 Italians in a suicide bombing in 2003, the ministry said. The suspects are the third group that the Spanish have arrested on charges of aiding the insurgency in less than seven months; altogether Spain has made 46 arrests. Nearly two years after the train bombings in Madrid killed 191 people on March 11, 2004, fears are growing that the country is becoming increasingly fertile ground for the recruitment of Islamic extremists. The network just broken up was the most sophisticated of those uncovered so far, the ministry said. Cells based in Barcelona and Madrid raised money, falsified documents, recruited and indoctrinated potential radicals, it said. The recruits were then sent on to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the American forces' most wanted man in Iraq, and other militant leaders, the ministry said. The network had links with militant groups in countries including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey and Syria, the ministry said, without offering details. "This operations shows once again that the government is in a permanent fight against international terrorism, a task that we must pursue with all possible attention and determination," José Antonio Alonso, the interior minister, said at a press conference here. Alonso confirmed suspicions that some of the militants recruited for duty in Iraq have begun returning to Spain and their native lands to begin operations in their native countries or adopted homelands. One of the network's missions, he said, was harboring veterans of the Iraqi conflict who had returned home to scout for possible terrorist targets in Europe and help identify promising recruits. Interior officials identified two countries through which recruits were transported on their way to Iraq, saying Syria and Jordan were typical transit points. Officials said the network, which focused on finding militants who would be willing to carry out suicide attacks in Iraq, appears to have done most of its recruiting in Spain. But investigators said the group also helped to transport militants recruited in North Africa. The Interior Ministry did not say how many people the network had sent to join the insurgency, or how many had taken part in attacks. But Alonso said that Italian and Spanish security forces had determined that one of the recruits was responsible for a suicide attack in Nasiriya, Iraq, in November of 2003 that killed 28 people, including 19 Italians and 9 Iraqis. At the time, it was the most lethal attack by insurgents since the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in April 2003. In his comments on Tuesday, Alonso said that there were no indications that the group had been preparing an imminent attack on Spanish soil. But he said that the group clearly had the capacity to carry one out, particularly the cell that was based in Madrid. "The government's security forces do not rule out that the cell's missions included planning acts of violence in European territory," Alonso said. One of the leaders in Madrid had been trained in Afghanistan, apparently by Al Qaeda, and another had expertise in explosives, Alonso said. Arrested Tuesday were 15 Moroccans, 3 Spaniards, a Turk and an Algerian, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. They were detained in Madrid, Barcelona and in the Basque region of northern Spain. The group had ties to two Islamic militant organizations affiliated with Al Qaeda. They are the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, based in Algeria, and the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group, the statement said. The Interior Ministry did not specify whether any of those arrested had been to Iraq or were planning to go, or if they were involved only in recruiting and logistical operations in Spain. Spanish intelligence officials say that channels for sending fighters from Spain to Iraq were developed by Islamic militants shortly after the insurgency began in 2003. But traffic appeared to be slight until last summer, when the police announced the arrests of 11 people on charges of sending recruits to Zarqawi and to Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic group of mostly Kurdish guerrillas suspected of collaborating with Zarqawi. The police arrested a second group of suspected recruiters in late November. That group was led by a 25-year-old Iraqi identified as Abu Sufian, a close ally of Zarqawi's, according to Spanish investigators. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Alonso confirmed suspicions that some of the militants recruited for duty in Iraq have begun returning to Spain and their native lands to begin operations in their native countries or adopted homelands. RCK (Regards from Chen Keinan) |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-01-11 00:46 |