Madrid

[NousDefionsDoc]

SPAIN: Moroccan investigators say they have identified a
scion of a wealthy Casablanca family with close ties to
the senior Al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the
architect of the Madrid bombings, according to Reuters.

DNA samples from other family members have been sent to
Spain from Morocco to help track down the man who is now
expected to become the subject of a Europe-wide hunt. The
36-year-old, who is married to an American , is believed to
have activated terrorist cells in Spain last year after he
fled across the Strait of Gibraltar following the
Casablanca bombings. He is said to have maintained links
to Morocco's Salafist Jihad, the terrorist group blamed for
the Casablanca bombings, but has established his own
network of cells called Hassam, meaning "the final
solution".

It has been learnt that Hamid Langiri, the head of the
Moroccan Security Directorate, believes that the suspect -
who cannot be named for legal reasons - is on the run in
Europe. "He is from the upper tier of the merchant class,"
said Mohamed Dafir, an adviser to the directorate.

"Langiri has intelligence that he was in Madrid before the
bombing."

Seven Moroccans, including Jamal Zougam, the suspected cell
leader, have been arrested in Spain following the bomb
attacks on Madrid's suburban rail network 11 days ago that
killed 202 people and injured about 1500. Zarqawi, a
Jordanian suspected of orchestrating attacks on coalition
troops in Iraq, is now thought to have been the ultimate
mastermind of both the Casablanca and Madrid bombings.

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Associated Press
April 4, 2004SPAIN0404

MADRID, Spain - Three suspects in the Madrid railway bombings blew themselves up Saturday in a building while surrounded by police, killing one special forces agent and wounding 11 police officers, the interior minister said.

. . . .

He said police believe some of the suspects may have carried out the March 11 train bombings that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800.

. . . .

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/4703528.html

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I just read this in the Times:

April 4, 2004
Blast in Madrid Kills 3 Suspects in Train Attack
By DALE FUCHS

MADRID, Sunday, April 4 — Three men believed to be responsible for the Madrid train bombings blew themselves up inside an apartment house here on Saturday night as the police prepared to assault the building, officials said. The blast also killed one officer and wounded at least 11 others.

The acting interior minister, �ngel Acebes, said the men, on spotting police special agents, shouted in Arabic and fired shots through the window of the building in Leganés, a working-class district of Madrid where many immigrants live.

The police, who began the raid at about 6 p.m., according to news reports, evacuated the building the men were in and surrounding apartment buildings. When the police moved to storm the building, around 9 p.m., according to news reports, "the terrorists set off a powerful explosion, blowing themselves up," Mr. Acebes said. The blast gutted the lower floor and tore off the roof of the building, Mr. Acebes said.

Among the dead, he said, were "some of the presumed authors" of the March 11 railway blasts that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,400. Since those bombings, Spanish authorities have arrested 24 people, mostly Moroccans or Spanish residents of Moroccan origin, and have jailed 14 of them. This is the first time in the case, however, that the Spanish authorities have attempted a raid of this scale.

Early in the week, Mr. Acebes said the investigation pointed to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which the authorities have linked to the terror network Al Qaeda and have accused in the suicide bombings last year in Casablanca, Morocco. On Thursday, a Spanish High Court judge, Juan del Olmo, issued six European arrest warrants in the case: five for Moroccan men and one for a Tunisian man, Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, whom he called the "leader and coordinator" of the train attacks.

Mr. Acebes refused to say whether the authorities believed that Mr. Abdelmajid had been one of the men in the apartment house. He also said it was "too early to tell" whether there had been more than three men in the house and whether anyone had escaped before the explosion.

Asked whether the raid was prompted by suspicions that the men were planning to plant a bomb in the future, Mr. Acebes did not answer directly, saying, "We came to the apartment as a consequence of the police investigation under way since the attacks." The authorities involved in the investigation, he added, were "working very intensely, meticulously and professionally and making great advances."

He called the performance of the officers in the raid "brilliant," and he expressed sympathy for the family of the killed officer, a 41-year-old man who had a wife and two children.

Many details of the police operation on Saturday remained unclear, including how many agents had been involved and why, after three weeks of quiet arrests and questioning, the authorities had decided to change tactics with a full-blown assault.

The raid came one day after a partially assembled bomb had been found beneath a high-speed rail line linking Madrid to Seville. The explosive in the device, Goma 2, was the same as the one used in the March 11 attacks, officials said Saturday. The bomb could not have exploded — officials say the person who was planting it might have been scared off before finishing — but it prompted the government to send in the army to help guard the tracks.

The Spanish news media have widely reported that a man previously linked to a Qaeda cell in Spain, Jamal Zougam, was believed to be the mastermind of the train bombings. But the arrest warrants this week singled out Mr. Abdelmajid, describing him as a "catalyzing agent" who "raised awareness of jihad" among his circle. He "had manifested specifically since 2003 that he was preparing a violent act in Spain, specifically in the Madrid area," the warrant said.

Spanish news media have said Mr. Abdelmajid was a resident of Madrid who worked as a real estate agent and lived in a middle-class neighborhood.

Pictures of Mr. Abdelmajid and the five Moroccan men in the warrants were published in newspapers throughout the country. One of the men, Said Berraj, is "supposedly linked to Al Qaeda based on a meeting held in October 2000 in Istanbul with three other presumed members of Al Qaeda," the warrant said.

In the past year, Spain has become a focus of global terrorism investigations. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., Spanish police have arrested dozens of men suspected of belonging to a cell of Al Qaeda.
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Sadr tells followers not to attack Spanish troops
BAGHDAD, Apr 19, 2004 (Xinhua via COMTEX) --

Firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has told his followers not to attack Spanish troops after Madrid announced it would pull its soldiers out of Iraq, his spokesman said Monday.

"We call (on them) to ensure the security of Spanish troops until they leave Iraq as long as these forces do not perpetrate aggressions against the Iraqi people," said Qais al-Khazaali in the Iraqi city of Najaf.

"We urge other countries which assign troops to the coalition in Iraq to follow the example of Spain and to withdraw their forces to save the lives of their soldiers," he added.

Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos told his Egyptian counterpart Ahmad Maher over phone on Sunday that Madrid will withdraw its some 1,300 troops from Iraq soon, the Egyptian official MENA news agency reported.

Moratinos told Maher in a phone call that "Spain was keen that Egypt would come second, following the US, to be informed about the Spanish intention," MENA said.

Copyright 2004 XINHUA NEWS AGENCY.

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Report: FBI Finds Link Between 9/11, Madrid Bombs
Sun Nov 28, 2004 08:37 AM ET

MADRID (Reuters) - The FBI has established the clearest link yet between the March 11 Madrid train bombings and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, a Spanish newspaper reported Sunday.

The FBI has told Spanish investigators that one of three men believed to have planned the Sept. 11 attacks from Spain in the summer of 2001 also gave the order to carry out the Madrid blasts, the newspaper ABC reported.

The train bombings killed 191 people and wounded 1,900 three days before a general election. In videotapes, the bombers claimed the attacks in the name of al Qaeda in Europe and said they were in revenge for Spain sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Investigators have long concluded that the Sept. 11 attacks were partially planned in Spain in July 2001.

Hijacker Mohammed Atta, believed to have piloted one of the airliners that crashed into New York's World Trade Center, visited Spain two months before the attacks and met two men.

One was Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, who is being held by U.S. authorities, while the other was unidentified.

ABC said investigators now believe that third man was the one who in December 2003 activated the Qaeda cell that carried out the March 11 attacks, which Spaniards call "our Sept. 11."

ABC said investigators had narrowed his identity down to three candidates and believed he was a lieutenant of Mustafa Setmarian, increasingly considered to have been a leader of the Madrid train bombers and who may have held a leadership role for al Qaeda in Europe.

Setmarian, aged 45 and of Syrian origin, was already wanted as part of a separate investigation into Islamic militant activity in Spain and is the subject of a Spanish wanted notice issued through Interpol.

The State Department said on Nov. 18 it was offering a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Setmarian, also known as Mustafa Setmariam Nasar or Abu Musab al-Suri. It described him as an al Qaeda member and former trainer at "terrorist camps" in Afghanistan.

Some 30 people are in custody or under court supervision for the train bombings for which one minor has so far been convicted. Seven prime suspects are dead and two or three other suspected collaborators remain at large.


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6934719