Mira~
10-20-2004, 08:59 AM
Pulling out of Iraq didn't help to quell the thirst of Islamic terror in Spain.
Terror Leader Said Plotted Spain Attack
Wed Oct 20, 7:31 AM ET World - AP Latin America
By MAR ROMAN, Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain - The suspected leader of a Muslim cell plotted to devastate Spain with a suicide bombing that would kill senior judges and destroy case files at a court that serves as a center for investigating Islamic terror, officials said Wednesday.
Police also said they had intercepted hundreds of letters from suspected cell members in which they said they were willing to stage suicide attacks.
A report from the National Police intelligence unit, obtained by The Associated Press, quotes a protected witness who had been in contact with United Arab Emirates-born Mohamed Achraf, who Spain says was recently arrested in Switzerland. Authorities in Switzerland deny this.
Achraf is suspected of being the leader of a Muslim terrorist cell that plotted to detonate an explosives-laden truck outside the National Court, located on a bustling avenue in downtown Madrid, according to the report. Police said he sought recruits among prisoners in a jail near Salamanca in western Spain, where he once did time for credit card fraud.
Eight suspects were arrested in Spain on Monday and Tuesday. The Interior Ministry said wiretapped phone conversations showed the cell had been talking about bombing the National Court, but no explosives were found in the raids.
That court is a hub of Spain's probes of Islamic terrorism.
One of its investigative judges is terror-specialist Baltasar Garzon, who since September 2003 has indicted 41 people on terrorism charges, including Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other al-Qaida suspects accused of staging the Sept. 11 attacks. That case file alone is believed to be tens of thousands of pages long.
Another judge at the court, Juan del Olmo, is leading the probe into the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people and have been blamed on Muslim militants linked to al-Qaida.
"If Spain loses three or four of its most important judges, that is worse than losing its prime minister," the report said, quoting testimony that the informant gave on his conversations with Achraf.
Achraf said many Muslims in Spanish jails wanted to get out "and have the opportunity to die as martyrs. In any case, Achraf made clear that the day of the attack, he would be the first martyr," the informant is quoted as saying.
"Furthermore, with this attack, many case files related to mujahedeen would be destroyed," the witness added, according to the police report.
The protected witness gave this testimony on Sept. 14, triggering a police operation that netted the eight arrests this week.
"Achraf told the witness, in a closed meeting, that he needed to give Spain the biggest blow of its history, for which he needed 1,000 kilograms of Goma 2," the report read. Goma 2 is a kind of compressed dynamite.
"He wanted the attack to be at the National Court in Madrid or the Supreme Court," it added.
In the report's only mention of the Madrid train bombings, the informant quoted Achraf as saying increased airline security after Sept. 11, 2001 had made the March 11 attack possible.
"After Sept. 11, all eyes turned to the skies, monitoring flights, and this helped stage the March 11 attacks on the trains," the report said.
The witness is not named, only identified by a number. The only detail on him in the report says that through a mosque in the southern town of Roquetas de Mar he knew many Muslims.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=721&e=8&u=/ap/20041020/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/spain_terror_arrests
Terror Leader Said Plotted Spain Attack
Wed Oct 20, 7:31 AM ET World - AP Latin America
By MAR ROMAN, Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain - The suspected leader of a Muslim cell plotted to devastate Spain with a suicide bombing that would kill senior judges and destroy case files at a court that serves as a center for investigating Islamic terror, officials said Wednesday.
Police also said they had intercepted hundreds of letters from suspected cell members in which they said they were willing to stage suicide attacks.
A report from the National Police intelligence unit, obtained by The Associated Press, quotes a protected witness who had been in contact with United Arab Emirates-born Mohamed Achraf, who Spain says was recently arrested in Switzerland. Authorities in Switzerland deny this.
Achraf is suspected of being the leader of a Muslim terrorist cell that plotted to detonate an explosives-laden truck outside the National Court, located on a bustling avenue in downtown Madrid, according to the report. Police said he sought recruits among prisoners in a jail near Salamanca in western Spain, where he once did time for credit card fraud.
Eight suspects were arrested in Spain on Monday and Tuesday. The Interior Ministry said wiretapped phone conversations showed the cell had been talking about bombing the National Court, but no explosives were found in the raids.
That court is a hub of Spain's probes of Islamic terrorism.
One of its investigative judges is terror-specialist Baltasar Garzon, who since September 2003 has indicted 41 people on terrorism charges, including Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other al-Qaida suspects accused of staging the Sept. 11 attacks. That case file alone is believed to be tens of thousands of pages long.
Another judge at the court, Juan del Olmo, is leading the probe into the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people and have been blamed on Muslim militants linked to al-Qaida.
"If Spain loses three or four of its most important judges, that is worse than losing its prime minister," the report said, quoting testimony that the informant gave on his conversations with Achraf.
Achraf said many Muslims in Spanish jails wanted to get out "and have the opportunity to die as martyrs. In any case, Achraf made clear that the day of the attack, he would be the first martyr," the informant is quoted as saying.
"Furthermore, with this attack, many case files related to mujahedeen would be destroyed," the witness added, according to the police report.
The protected witness gave this testimony on Sept. 14, triggering a police operation that netted the eight arrests this week.
"Achraf told the witness, in a closed meeting, that he needed to give Spain the biggest blow of its history, for which he needed 1,000 kilograms of Goma 2," the report read. Goma 2 is a kind of compressed dynamite.
"He wanted the attack to be at the National Court in Madrid or the Supreme Court," it added.
In the report's only mention of the Madrid train bombings, the informant quoted Achraf as saying increased airline security after Sept. 11, 2001 had made the March 11 attack possible.
"After Sept. 11, all eyes turned to the skies, monitoring flights, and this helped stage the March 11 attacks on the trains," the report said.
The witness is not named, only identified by a number. The only detail on him in the report says that through a mosque in the southern town of Roquetas de Mar he knew many Muslims.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=721&e=8&u=/ap/20041020/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/spain_terror_arrests