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| Europe |
| 29 indicted in connection with 3/11 |
| 2006-04-12 |
| So much for the "no al-Qaeda link" that was being touted awhile back ... A Spanish judge indicted 29 people on Tuesday in connection with the Madrid train bombings two years ago, suggesting that the group attacked Spain for its support of the American-led invasion of Iraq and for its increasingly aggressive police investigations of Islamic radical groups. The indictment, part of a long-awaited report about the attacks running nearly 1,500 pages, did not assert directly that the plotters had been motivated by anger at the policies of Spain's government. But the judge who wrote the report, Juan del Olmo, noted that the timing of the attacks, March 11, was just three days before Spain's general election. José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero of the Socialist Party won that election in a surprise victory and fulfilled his campaign pledge to withdraw Spanish troops immediately after taking office in April. Five of the men indicted Tuesday were charged with carrying out or conspiring to carry out the attacks, done with 10 strategically placed bombs that exploded on four commuter trains, killing 191 people and wounding about 1,800. A sixth man was accused of acting as a "necessary collaborator," while the rest were charged with belonging to or aiding a terrorist group, or contributing to the attacks through support roles like providing explosives or falsifying documents. The trial is expected to begin next spring. Judge del Olmo's report largely summarized provisional findings he had made in filings over the past two years. It asserted that the cell that carried out the attacks was made up mostly of Moroccan radicals, several with ties to Al Qaeda and to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, a militant organization seeking to establish an Islamist state in Morocco. Spanish investigators have said that the cell came together in Spain initially under the guidance of a Syrian named Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, also known as Abu Dahdah, who was convicted in September by a Spanish court for conspiring to commit the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and for leading a Qaeda cell in Spain. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison. After Mr. Yarkas and several followers were arrested in 2001, investigators have said, the group reconstituted itself under the leadership of Sarhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, a former Tunisian graduate student in economics who in 2003 began calling for an attack on Spain in part because of its support of American policies toward Iraq. There is no indication in Judge del Olmo's report that Mr. Fakhet or Jamal Ahmidan, a Moroccan identified as the operational head of the cell, had any direct links to the top leadership of Al Qaeda. But in explaining the major influences on the group, Judge del Olmo cited a document posted on a Web site run by Global Islamic Media Front, a group widely seen as a front for Al Qaeda. The document, apparently posted in late 2003, called for attacks on Spain before the general elections in March, saying they would help drive a wedge between the Spanish public, which overwhelmingly opposed the invasion of Iraq, and the government of former Prime Minister José MarÃa Aznar, who supported the invasion and contributed troops. Judge del Olmo also suggested that the Madrid attacks were partly a response to a crackdown on Islamic radical groups by the Spanish police that began in the late 1990's. That crackdown, which included the arrest of Mr. Yarkas and the breakup of his cell in Madrid, disrupted a major logistical base for Islamic radicals in Europe, Spanish investigators say. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |