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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,...