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I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973*, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who...

Terrorist involved in Madrid and 9/11 bombings released by German court July 18, 2005 German-Syrian Mamoun Darkazanli Germany says terror arrest illegalMIM: If the Germans don't want to hand over one of their citizens, why don't they start proceedings to strip him of his citizenship instead of releasing him to continue his terrorist activity with the use of a German passport?http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/18/germany.extradite/BERLIN, Germany -- Germany's high court has ordered the release of a Syrian-born German man whom Spain wanted extradited in connection with the 2003 Madrid bombings.The Federal Constitutional Court ruled Monday it would be illegal to extradite Mamoun Darkazanli, a...

THE terrorist believed to have organised last year’s Madrid train attacks is emerging as a figure in the hunt for the London bombers. Spanish security sources are said to have warned four months ago that Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a 47-year-old Syrian, had identified Britain as a likely target. Coded commands from the Syrian, thought to have included threats to other European countries including Britain, were found in a flat raided after the Madrid bombings in March 2004. Spanish investigators said Nasar, now believed to be in Iraq, had set up a “sleeper” cell of terrorists in Britain. But they believed...

MADRID — Spain's governing Socialists, in a report to be presented in Congress tomorrow, claim their conservative predecessors manipulated information after the Madrid train bombings for political gain. That is among the conclusions of Socialist deputies who served on the parliamentary inquiry created to probe the causes and consequence of the attacks, which took place under the premiership of centre-right Jose Maria Aznar of the Popular Party. The more-than-400-page document will be formally presented on Wednesday in the lower house of Parliament. Besides criticism of the former government, the top Socialist on the investigative commission told EFE that the report...

Last Updated: Friday, 3 June, 2005, 15:01 GMT 16:01 UK Madrid bombing 'manager' in court An extradition decision is expected on 14 June A man arrested in Berkshire was the "manager" of a terror group whose members included some of the Madrid train bombers, a court has heard.Moutaz Almallah Dabas, 39, is accused of running a safe house in the Spanish capital where extreme Islamist recruits were trained before being sent abroad. Details of the charges were read out at his extradition hearing at Bow Street Magistrates' Court, in London. Mr Dabas was living in Slough with his family when...

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police have arrested three Moroccan men on suspicion of providing arms and financing for the Madrid train bombing attacks that killed 191 people, police said on Tuesday......

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...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 Maria Aznar initially (and fatally) assumed? On May 16, the Madrid daily El Mundo published a...

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...

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...

Spain Herald The American TV network ABC's news division showed a false image of the backpack that did not explode on March 11, 2004, according to reporter Fernando Múgica in the Spanish daily El Mundo. According to Múgica, at a Madrid police station "the officers wanted to help the ABC reporters, but when the camera crew came, they didn't have the backpack that had contained the bomb there, so one of the officers showed them a similar backpack which was the property of another officer." Said Mugica, "I don't know whether the network knew this or simply accepted that the...

SIDI MOUMEN, Morocco (AP) - Women lug jugs of water from a common tap as children play in the narrow and winding alleys. But it is the searing gazes of the jobless young men lounging outside corrugated-metal roof shacks that best tell the story of Carriere Thomas, a squalid shantytown in the Casablanca suburb of Sidi Moumen. The encampment was home to 11 of 13 suicide bombers who detonated explosives-laden backpacks at five targets in Casablanca the night of May 16, 2003 - killing 32 bystanders. Residents say the settlement, with 50,000 mostly illiterate and unemployed residents, was easy prey...

The terrorists that carried out the Madrid bombings in March 2004 have been trained at special Al Qaeda based in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The news was broken Tuesday by the chief of the local police department Dragomir Andan at a special press conference. RIA Novosti cited the top police chief as saying that all 11 terrorists left for Spain passing through Sarajevo. It was also reported that the explosives used in the terror acts were produced in Bosnia. A total of 192 people were killed and over 1,500 others were injured in the March 11, 2004 attacks in Madrid.

Informer told police of Spanish bomb plot By Isambard Wilkinson in Madrid (Filed: 25/04/2005) A political row over the al-Qa'eda train bombings in Madrid was rekindled yesterday after it emerged that a police informer had issued a warning three months before that Islamist terrorists were plotting the massacre. The Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, which came to power three days after the attacks, accused its centre-Right predecessor of "lies" and a "monumental lack of foresight" after the information emerged when security services documents were made public by the judge in charge of the case, Juan del Olmo. The...

MADRID, Spain - Spanish authorities have ended their interrogation of an Egyptian suspect in last year's Madrid train bombings and will send him back to Italy where he is accused of links to militant Muslim groups, court officials said Monday. Spanish Judge Juan del Olmo has filed provisional charges of mass murder and terrorism against the suspect, Rabei Osman Ahmed, who was handed over by Italy in December for a maximum of six months. Spanish authorities say the Egyptian, considered an explosives expert, was a key figure in the planning of the bombings and in al-Qaida's structure in Europe. His...

MADRID: Spanish authorities have charged 11 Pakistani nationals over suspected links with Al Qaeda sympathisers who carried out the Madrid train bombings a year ago, judicial sources said Wednesday. One of the 11, Shahzad Ali Gujar, is suspected of having transferred funds to members of Al-Qaeda, including Amjad Farooki, who Pakistani security forces killed last September and who was implicated in the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. Farooki is widely believed to have been an Al-Qaeda recruiter. In all, investigators believe Al Qaeda members in Pakistan received some 800,000 euros in funds from Spain. Mohamed Afzaal, believed to have...

RIYADH (AFP) -- The Saudi Interior Ministry confirmed Saturday that security forces killed Saud al-Otaibi, described as Al-Qaeda's chief in the kingdom, and Moroccan Abdel Karim al-Mejati, suspected mastermind of the Madrid train bombings, during clashes this week. The pair were among 15 Al-Qaeda suspects killed in a three-day gunbattle which ended Tuesday in the northern Al-Qassim region, the ministry said in a statement carried on official media. It was the bloodiest battle in a nearly two-year-old campaign by Saudi security forces against Islamist militants behind a wave of attacks in the ultra-conservative Muslim Persian Gulf state. The killing of...

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Thirteen men arrested in and around the Spanish capital last Friday on suspicion of collaborating with a terrorist group connected to the Madrid train bombings were freed from jail, a court spokeswoman told CNN. Police investigators said they had links to several other suspects in the train bombings, but after arraignments this week Judge Juan del Olmo released them on lesser charges of collaborating with a terrorist group.

From Hindrocket's post this morning ... Two Steps Forward, One Step Back Or is it the other way around? The Washington Times reports: The condemnation of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by the Islamic Commission of Spain on the first anniversary of the train bombings in Madrid that took 200 lives is making waves throughout the Muslim world.The Spanish commission's fatwa, or condemnation, follows other signs of the kind of public theological debate rarely seen in the Muslim world, openly challenging the dominance of Saudi Arabia's wealthy Wahhabi fanatics.  On the other hand, the Washington Post describes an...

Fernando Huarte Santamaría, a leader of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) in the northern city of Gijón, Asturias, contacted Algerian terrorist Benesmail Abdelkrim in the Villabona prison in 2001. Huarte even got Abdelkrim a furlough to go to the dentist and paid his bill; the two last met in October 2004. A few days later, the police arrested Abdelkrim and found the address of a well-known ETA terrorist in his pocket. Abdelkrim served time with two other notorious prisoners, Spaniard Antonio Toro Castro and Moroccan Rafá Zouhier, two police informants accused in the March 11, 2004 bombings. In April 1997...

A BELGIAN court cleared the way today for a suspected Islamist militant to be sent to Spain where he is wanted for alleged involvement in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people last year. The Supreme Court of Appeals rejected a final appeal by Moroccan-born Youssef Belhadj against his extradition to Spain, where he is suspected of being al-Qaeda's spokesman who claimed responsibility for the bombings in a videotape, a spokeswoman for the federal public prosecutor's office said. Belhadj could be extradited any time in the next 10 days, but the spokeswoman said it would probably not take that...