MADRID: Spain was on high alert for terrorist attacks on Saturday after the police arrested 14 suspects of Pakistani and Indian origin who authorities contend were plotting an attack on Barcelona, officials said.Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the interior minister, told reporters that the 14 had been arrested in Barcelona, the capital of the Catalonia region in the northeast, and that more arrests were expected. The police, who acted with the help of information from foreign intelligence agencies, raided several apartments, a prominent mosque and a small prayer hall, Rubalcaba and local Muslim representatives said.
Rubalcaba would not say which countries' intelligence services had provided information. He said the police had confiscated material for making explosives, including four timing devices, in the raids. The detainees were Islamists who "belonged to a well-organized group that had gone a step beyond radicalization," he said. "When someone has timers in their home, you have no option but to think violent acts are being planned," he said.
With a general election set for March 9, Spanish authorities are on the alert for terrorist attacks by Islamist groups or the Basque militant group ETA.
Muslim representatives in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona said the police raided the Torek Ben Ziad mosque, one of the city's most prominent mosques, about 3 a.m. One Muslim leader in Barcelona, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue, said the arrested men belonged to Tabligh Jamaat, a Pakistan-based group. The group publicizes a benign strain of revivalist Islam but is suspected by Western intelligence agencies to be a recruiting ground for jihadists.
Spanish and international intelligence officials say they are worried the growing Pakistani population in Spain is becoming a new European link in the global terrorism network.
| One way to deal with the problem is to stop allowing the Paks into your country. Sucks for the Paks who aren't involved with terrorism, but it would certainly focus world attention on the problem. |