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Arrests in Spain stopped a string of terrorist bombings across Europe, according to Australia's Daily Telegraph. At least the fourteen men arrested plotted to hit transportation centers in Spain, Portugal, France, and Germany, an operation that would have been credited to al-Qaeda and Pakistani warlord Baitullah Mehsud, the man behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto: A GROUP of alleged Islamist extremists were planning a wave of suicide attacks across Europe before they were detained in Barcelona last weekend. The group intended to carry out three attacks in Spain and one each in Portugal, France and Germany, an unnamed man who...

MADRID (Reuters) - Islamist extremists were planning attacks across Europe, especially against public transport, before their arrests in Barcelona last weekend, a Spanish paper reported on Saturday, citing a would-be attacker's testimony. The Al Qaeda-inspired cell planned to attack the Barcelona metro and other targets in Spain, Germany, France, Portugal and the United Kingdom, said the bomber turned police informant. In testimony that led to the arrest of 14 South Asians last Saturday, the informant told police the group had a preference for attacks on public transport, especially metro systems, El Pais newspaper reported. "If we attack the metro, the...

An Islamic militant cell broken up over the weekend in Barcelona was planning a suicide attack on the city's public transport network, a Spanish judge said Wednesday as he ordered 10 suspects jailed pending further investigation and freed two others. Judge Ismael Moreno, of the National Court, made the announcement after questioning the 12 suspects for seven hours. He said the attacks had been planned for last weekend. Fourteen suspects were arrested Saturday although two were released by Spanish authorities on Tuesday. The judge said that of the 10 people he is ordering kept in custody, three were planning to...

Spain arrests 14 terror suspects   Spain is still haunted by the Madrid bombings - carried out by Islamists Bomb-related material has been found during raids in Barcelona which led to the arrest of 14 people suspected of links with an Islamist terror network. Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said the suspects included 12 from Pakistan and two from India. Local media reports that the Spanish intelligence agency had warned France, the UK and Portugal that a terror cell was preparing an imminent attack. This coincides with a European tour by Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf. Radical threat Police...

SALOU, Spain (AP) — A few months before Sept. 11, several al-Qaida operatives slipped into this Spanish beachside resort, blending in with the tourist crowds to hold what investigators increasingly suspect was a pivotal rendezvous in planning the terrorist plot. A senior Spanish official with extensive knowledge of the investigation said authorities now believe the mid-July gathering was the last face-to-face encounter between hijack ringleader Mohammed Atta and his al-Qaida liaisons in Europe. The main details of the conspiracy to crash commercial jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were largely in place by the time the meetings...

Let me tell you about my motherFrom Enigmas of 3/11 by Luis del Pino. Chapter 13THE HOUSE OF MORATAPublished in Libertad Digital www.libertaddigital.com on October 12th 2005.A few weeks ago, we Spaniards have known the sentence against Al Qaeda's Spain cell, accused of collaborating in the preparation of the New York attacks. One of the persons found guilty was Mohamed Needl Acaid, aka Abu Nidal. Abu Nidal was born on March 1st 1967, was Syrian, as were many of the indicted in that same trial against Al Qaeda. Just as many others prosecuted, he was married with a Spanish woman,...

‘Jihad recruiters’ held in SpainMonday, 28 May 2007, 08:38 GMT 09:38 UKSpanish police have arrested 14 suspected Islamist militants, mostly in the north-eastern region of Catalonia. The suspects were allegedly involved in recruiting jihadi volunteers for training in Afghanistan and Iraq.Police in Catalonia detained 11 in Barcelona and other towns. The others were arrested in Madrid and Malaga. The interior ministry believes the majority of those arrested are Moroccan nationals. Police have confiscated a considerable amount of computer data. Twenty-nine suspected Islamists - most of them Moroccans - are currently on trial for the deadly Madrid train bombings in...

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police on Tuesday arrested three Moroccans suspected of having links to al Qaeda and recruiting people to send to training camps in Africa. Police said in a statement they had detained Mohamed Laksir, 23, Moulay Lahoucine Miftah Idrissi, 27, and Mohamed Akazim, 32, in Barcelona under international warrants lodged by Moroccan authorities, who want them extradited. The Spanish police said the men were linked to al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). Police said they were suspected of recruiting people and indoctrinating them with radical...

"Few people realize the significance of the March 11, 2004 terrorist attacks in Spain. There are those in our country, particularly in the leftist news media that erroneously believe that the Al-Qaeda attacks are a result of the Spanish government's support for the war against terrorists. Others are deluded into thinking that the attacks were carried out because a small Spanish Army unit is currently in Iraq carrying out humanitarian duties. The attacks happened for an entirely different reason. That reason is simple. Spain is a former Islamic country. That's correct. From 718 AD until 1492, the Iberian Peninsula was...

MADRID, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Spain's public prosecutor urged a court on Thursday to overturn an alleged al Qaeda leader's conviction for conspiring with the Sept. 11 plotters, calling the evidence weak and unconvincing. If the Supreme Court agrees with the prosecutor, it would mean that a high-profile trial of 24 alleged al Qaeda members in Spain last year had failed to convict anyone in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities. Three of the 24 defendants were accused of 2,973 murders in connection with the U.S. attacks -- charges that carried potential jail terms of more...

MADRID — Spanish police arrested 16 people Monday who are suspected of recruiting Al Qaeda fighters to send to Iraq, officials said. The group's alleged leader, a 25-year-old Iraqi known as Abu Sufian, had access to Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, and probably sent his recruits on suicide missions, the Interior Ministry said. The 16, of several nationalities, sent volunteers to Iraq "to wage jihad as members of the Al Qaeda network," Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso told a news conference. He said the group had two fighters ready to send to Iraq at the time...

<p>November 19, 2001 -- An al Qaeda cell in Spain helped carry out the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, a Spanish judge said yesterday.</p> <p>High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon ordered eight alleged members of the cell to remain in jail while an investigation continues, charging they "were directly linked to the preparation and carrying out of the attacks perpetrated by ‘suicide pilots.' "</p>

Updated: 15:17, Wednesday November 23, 2005 Spanish police have arrested 10 people suspected of setting up a support network for an Algerian Islamic extremist group linked to al Qaeda.Officials believe the group was involved in activities such as drug trafficking and credit card fraud, rather than planning an attack.The arrests followed a police investigation into connections between the group and Algerians in other European countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Belgium and Denmark.Police arrested seven of the suspects in the province of Alicante, two in Grenada and one in Murcia province, seizing computers, drugs and documents. Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso...

Tayseer Alouni was allowed bail on health grounds An Al-Jazeera television reporter accused of links with al-Qaeda has been re-arrested in Spain. Tayseer Alouni and a second suspect, Jamal Hussein, were ordered to be taken into custody on the grounds that they might flee. They had originally been bailed for health reasons before the verdicts in their case, due later this month. Mr Alouni denies using a posting in Afghanistan to distribute money to the militant Islamic network. The prosecution says the reporter, who holds dual Syrian and Spanish citizenship, had an "intense and continuous" relationship with Immad Yarkas,...

MADRID - The alleged chief of an Al Qaeda cell in Spain believed to have helped prepare the September 11 attacks was hospitalised on Friday morning after being attacked by fellow prisoners, authorities said. While his injuries were not serious, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, alias Abu Dahdah, was admitted to hospital in the eastern city of Castellon for a complete medical examination, the Spanish prison administration told AFP. Abu Dahdah and 23 other co-defendants face record jail terms of 74,377 years for their alleged involvement in preparing the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington in which some...

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Inmates on Friday beat up a suspected al-Qaida cell leader jailed on charges he helped plot the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, breaking his jaw, nose and a tooth and injuring one of his eyes, Spanish officials said. Imad Yarkas, 42, a Syrian-born Spaniard, was set upon by other prisoners in the dining hall of a prison in the eastern city of Castellon, said officials at the Interior Ministry department that oversees Spain's prisons. Spanish government press officials did not give their names. An investigation has been opened because Yarkas, who is being held...

In the biggest display of backbone since Aznar was voted out of office, Spanish police arrested 16 Islamic terror suspects in raids in several cities. Included in the arrests were 11 men accused of having ties to Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's group Al Qaeda in Iraq and recruiting people for attacks there, officials said Wednesday. Imagine that, attacks there, in Spain, even after they pulled their troops out of Iraq in a move to appease the terrorists.

MADRID — A major operation across Spain has led to the arrest of 16 suspects linked to the Al-Qaeda leader in Irak Abu Musab Al Zarquai. The alleged terrorists were detained in Madrid, Andalusia, Catalonia, Levante and Ceuta, Spain's north African enclave. Eleven suspects are allegedly linked to Abu Musab Al Zarquai, who is the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and behind Islamic terrorist attacks in the country. The other five suspects are said to be linked to the Madrid train bombings in March last year in which 191 people were killed. Five hundred police have been involved in the...

It has long been understood that the Spanish socialists shamelessly exploited the March 11, 2004, terrorist attacks in Madrid’s train station for political advantage. They did so with palpable disregard for a frightening fact: The far-reaching geostrategic repercussions of that incident — which vaporized the ruling conservative party’s electoral lead just days before the polling — gave those seeking similar results elsewhere every incentive to engage in violence against other democracies’ electoral processes. But what if the perpetrators were neither Islamofacists, as the winning socialists immediately asserted, nor the Basque terrorist organization known as ETA, as the government of José...

MADRID, Spain (AP) - A Spanish judge indicted 13 suspected Islamic extremists Wednesday on charges of belonging to al-Qaida and said some of them probably took part in last year's train bombings in Madrid. The indictment said the suspects, mostly Moroccans, had formed two terror cells in 2002 - one in Morocco and one in Madrid - and concluded that after Spain sent peacekeeping troops to Iraq that year, the country was "an enemy of Islam and therefore it was necessary to stage an attack" in Spain. The 13 men were arrested in raids starting last October after police claimed...