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MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Suspected Islamic extremists arrested last week in Barcelona were planning al Qaeda-style attacks in Spain, Germany, France, Britain and Portugal, according to an informant who "infiltrated" the group, Spain's El Pais newspaper reports. "If we attack the metro [subway system in Barcelona], the emergency services can't get there," one of the suspected suicide bombers told the informant, El Pais reported on Saturday. "Our preference is public transport, especially the metro." El Pais reported that it had access to the informant's testimony to Spanish officials. CNN has confirmed that authorities have given high importance to an informant's...

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...

MADRID, Spain (AP) - The suspected financial mastermind of an al-Qaida cell accused of helping plot the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks depicted himself Tuesday as a legitimate businessman and a moderate Muslim. Syrian-born real estate promoter Mohamed Ghaleb Kalaje Zouaydi is accused of using his business dealings as a front for financing the Spanish cell and funneling money to Muslim extremists in other countries, including Germany, another staging ground for the suicide airliner attacks in the United States. Zouaydi testified that one such transfer he made to Germany in 1999 to Mamoun Darkanzali - an alleged al-Qaida member said to...

MADRID (Reuters) - An al Qaeda cell based in France planned a chemical attack on a U.S. naval base in Rota, Spain, newspaper ABC reported on Tuesday. Algerian Said Arif, extradited to France from Syria last year, has admitted his cell was plotting a chemical attack on the southern Spanish base controlled by the United States since 1953, the Spanish daily reported. The paper said Arif was considered a lieutenant of Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. Zarqawi himself was accused of planning a chemical attack last year in his native Jordan, which authorities thwarted. Arif was...

The suspected leader of al Qaeda in Spain condemned the Sept. 11 attacks, the Madrid train bombings and all acts of terrorism at his trial Tuesday, calling them a violation of Islam.Syrian-born Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas is the prime suspect in the trial of 24 men accused of belonging to al Qaeda and is one of three charged with mass murder over the attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001."I deny it (terrorism) and I vigorously reject it in front of the whole world. ... I am not saying it to defend myself or anything. I say...

Madrid puts 41 on trial for links to 9/11 attacks By Leslie Crawford in Madrid Published: April 21 2005 17:30 | Last updated: April 22 2005 13:38 Spain put global terrorism in the dock on Friday, with the mass trial of 41 men accused of being accomplices in the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. They are also accused of belonging to al-Qaeda, the Islamist terrorist network. The trial, which is being held in a purpose-built, high-security court on the outskirts of Madrid, will be the first in Spain to address the threat of global terrorism. It will...

MADRID, Spain — Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world's first fatwa (search), or Islamic edict, against Usama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the Al Qaeda (search) leader. ....

MADRID (AFX) - Spain's Islamic Commission, which groups the nation's Muslim community, said it was issuing a fatwa against Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, 'We are going to issue a fatwa (religious decree) against Bin Laden this afternoon,' Mansour Escudero, who leads the Federation of Islamic religious entities (Feeri) and co-secretary general of the Spanish governmenmt-created Commission told AFP. The Commission invited Spanish-based imams to condemn terrorism at Friday prayers, when the whole country will be remembering the 191 people who were killed in the train blasts and the 1,900 injured a year ago. The attacks have been blamed on...

SPAIN'S Islamic Commission said today it was issuing a decree against al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in the name of whose network last year's Madrid train bombings were claimed. "We are going to issue a fatwa (religious decree) against bin Laden this afternoon," said Mansour Escudero, who leads the Federation of Islamic religious entities (Feeri) and is co-secretary general of the Spanish governmenmt-created commission. The commission invited Spanish-based imams (clerics) to condemn terrorism at Friday prayers, when the whole country will be remembering the 191 people who were killed in the train blasts and the 1900 injured exactly 12 months...

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Police on Wednesday arrested three Moroccans they believe were part of a radical Islamic cell looking to buy explosives in a central European country for a terrorist attack in Spain, the Interior Ministry said. Majid Bakkali, Mohamed Douha and Abdelkader Farhaoui were arrested in the northeastern towns of Sant Andreu de la Barca and Mollet de Valles before dawn, the ministry said in a statement. The three were part of a cell "that was engaged in different activities leading to the purchase of explosives, with the aim of committing terrorist attacks in our country," the ministry...

MADRID, Spain - Spanish police arrested four Moroccans on the Canary Island of Lanzarote on suspicion of being members of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. One is believed to have had a possible role in the Madrid train bombings, the Interior Ministry said. The four were suspected of setting up a logistical base on the island following recent arrests of members of the group in France and Belgium, the Interior Ministry said on Friday. The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group is part of the radical Salafia Jihadia movement and has close links to al-Qaida, the ministry said. It is believed to...

MADRID- Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero blamed Islamic radicals linked to Al-Qaeda for the March 11 attacks that killed 191 people in Madrid and called for a cross-party pact against international terrorism. The socialist leader also hit out at the previous right-wing government of Jose Maria Aznar for trying to pin responsibility on the Basque separatist group ETA and wiping out evidence of its actions at the time of the attacks. And he slammed the United States for suggesting the outrage had cowed the Spanish people into ousting Aznar, Washington's strong ally in the war in Iraq, at...

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...

Spanish court upholds indictment of 21 members of Al Qaeda cell

A Spanish judge investigating suspected Islamic militants has drawn links between the September 11 attacks, the Madrid train bombings and a plot to blow up the High Court. He says suspects in the March 11 railway blasts, which killed 191 people, helped train and indoctrinate suspects in a purported plot to drive a 500 kilogram suicide truck bomb into the court. The judge, Baltasar Garzon, has also connected these two groups with members of a suspected Al Qaeda cell arrested in Spain. He says those members aided the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Mr Garzon outlined the...

INVESTIGATORS OF THE 3/11 TERRORIST ATTACK ON Spain have found that the leader of the radical Islamic cell was a drug dealer who traded a load of hashish for the explosives that killed 191 people. Spanish authorities are finding that the al-Qaeda-related terrorists are also ­tangled up in organized crime, the underworld of robbery, counterfeiting, fraud, drug dealing, and murder. How can that be? A Muslim who steals is to have his hand cut off. Islam forbids the use of drugs. How can there be an alliance between fundamentalist Islam and organized crime? The answer, reports Sebastian Rotella of the...

MADRID, May 19 (Reuters) - A Spanish judge accused three Algerians on Wednesday of belonging to al Qaeda and forming part of a network that recruited Islamists across Europe to go to Iraq and fight the U.S.-led occupation. High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon said the mobilising of insurgents was directed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose group has claimed responsibility for the beheading of a U.S. hostage and the assassination of the head of the Iraqi Governing Council. Jordanian-born Zarqawi has emerged, through a series of attacks and a barrage of recent propaganda messages, as the leading al Qaeda operative fighting...

Al-Qaida Revealed Spain Strategy Last YearNATO allies were warned of an al-Qaida offensive against Spain as part of the movement's effort to force European states to withdraw military support from the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, reports Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service. As early as December 2003, al-Qaida-aligned operatives posted a communiqué on the Internet spelling out the organization's strategy to force NATO allies to abandon the United States in Iraq. The strategy envisioned a wounded Spain as being the first to withdraw its troops from Iraq in a move that would be followed by other European Union states. A...

In making that choice, Spanish voters have given radical Islamists (not to be confused with the religion of Islam itself) a symbolic triumph of monumental proportions -- and all it took was the detonation of a dozen or so backpack bombs. In the minds of the murderous jihadi fundamentalists, the swift capitulation of Spain has to be seen as a historic moment in their struggle to reverse the centuries-old humiliation of the "Reconquista" -- the reconquest of what is now Spain and Portugal by Christian forces several centuries after the Moorish invasion in 711 had extended Islamic rule to most...

A Spanish judge has charged four Algerian men with membership of a terrorist organisation. The judge said chemicals found in their homes could have been used to make explosives. Police also found a mobile phone that had been modified in a similar way to phones used as detonators in the Madrid train bombings in March. The indictment alleges the men were working to support an Islamic militant cell based in France. The men were originally arrested along with 12 others in January 2003 on suspicion of being part of an Algerian extremist group with links to al-Qaeda. They were later...

"It was known in advance, by December 2003, that something was going to happend in Spain before the elections. Socialist Party knew, mass media tycoon knew, secret services knew and all of them were quiet. FFI explains al-Qaida document Since the Madrid bombings on 11 March there has been considerable media interest in a document found on radical islamist websites some months ago by researchers at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI). The document recommends "painful strikes" against Spanish "forces" specifically around the time of the Spanish elections and there has naturally been much speculation about the relationship between this...

MADRID, Spain - They were young, they were angry and they almost got caught. A highway patrolman stopped members of the Madrid bombing cell as they drove a stolen Volkswagen toward Spain's capital with a trunk full of dynamite a week before the train bombings. But all they got was a ticket. It's another baffling detail of a terrorist attack that killed 191 people, wounded more than 1,800 and is blamed on men with nicknames like Mowgli, the boy in "The Jungle Book." In their final minutes of life, poised to blow themselves up rather than surrender or be arrested,...

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spanish police believe a top al-Qaida operative in Europe put two key suspects in the Madrid bombings in contact with one another, a newspaper reported Friday. Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet of Tunisia, the alleged coordinator of the attacks, is believed to have met with al-Qaida operative Amer Azizi in Turkey in late 2002 or early 2003 to ask for fighters for an attack in Madrid, the daily El Mundo said. Azizi, a Moroccan who remains at large, was indicted on terrorism charges last September by Judge Baltasar Garzon as part of his probe into an al-Qaida...

Terrorists who blew themselves up last weekend as police moved in to arrest them over the March 11 bombings had been plotting an imminent attack on a sprawling shopping center outside Madrid, a newspaper reported Thursday. Police combing through the apartment found evidence that included maps of Parquesur, a retail and leisure complex less than a mile (1.6-kilometer) from the apartment in the town of Leganes, El Mundo said, quoting police. The police also found at least two backpacks and a belt, all packed with dynamite and wired to detonators, the paper said. Interior Ministry officials were not available to...

The suspected terrorists who died in last weekend's suicide blast planned another major attack in Madrid, possibly during this week's Easter celebrations, a court official said Wednesday.Police also said Saturday's explosion during a police storming of an apartment may have killed seven suspects, and this and the arrests of other suspects could stir another terror cell to mount a jihad or 'holy war' in Spain, according to the official, who asked not to be identified.The official said that explosives and other evidence found in the apartment after Saturday's explosion indicated the suspects killed planned an imminent follow up to the...

<p>April 4, 2004 -- MADRID, Spain - At least three men wanted for last month's horrific Madrid railway bombings blew themselves up yesterday after a failed bid to shoot cops who swarmed their apartment building.</p> <p>The bomb killed one special forces agent and wounded 15 police officers in the Madrid suburb of Leganes.</p>

MADRID, April 5 (Reuters) - Spanish investigators give credence to a letter purportedly from al Qaeda and sent to the newspaper ABC threatening more bombings unless Spain withdraws troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. "In principle, the letter is given certain credibility, although the analysis is not yet complete. We believe it could have been sent by people directly involved in recent events," an Interior Ministry spokesman said on Monday. The letter was signed by the same name -- Abu Dujana al Afgani, also written as Abu Duham al Afgani -- as that given by a man in a videotape who...

<p>On March 11, Spain suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history and one of the bloodiest the world has ever known. Terrorists planned their cowardly acts with the express purpose of killing as many people as possible, in order to sow terror and strike a mortal blow against our freedoms and rights. It was a day we felt an immense pain, pain we will never forget. But it was also a pain we must all learn from.</p>

MADRID, March 23 — Spain's prime minister-elect, who has pledged to pull troops out of Iraq unless the United Nations assumes supervision of the occupation force there, is considering increasing the number of Spanish peacekeepers in Afghanistan, officials in his Socialist Party said Tuesday. Advertisement Less than two weeks after the deadly train bombings in Madrid, Prime Minister-elect José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero wants to signal his commitment to fight terrorism and show the United States that Spain remains a loyal ally, said one senior party official. The new government wants "to send a message that the Socialists do not believe...

The Spanish election results are reverberating around the world, and the realization is setting in that the implications are disastrous -- not only for Spain, but for all of Europe, for the war on terror, and perhaps for the very survival of western civilization. Mass murderers have won an easy victory of staggering proportions. And any hope of coping with its effects will first require a realistic assessment of the damage that has already been done and where it is likely to lead -- all weighed in the context of the sobering lessons of history. Although the recent events in...

Since last Thursday's tragic events in Madrid and their impact on Sunday on the course of the Spanish elections, a great deal of commentary in blogosphere has been focused on what happened and why, as well as their potential for impact on the American elections that will occur this November. This analysis will endeavor to address some of those concerns, but I will be quite frank: this was a definitive victory for al-Qaeda. The Genesis of the Madrid Massacre Al-Qaeda attacking Spanish public transportation is certainly nothing new. Joe noted that attacks on public transportation are a logical outgrowth of...