Madrid trail points to Morocco

2004-03-16 07:55

Madrid - Spanish police think they have identified six Moroccans as the bombers who blew up four commuter trains in Madrid last week, the newspaper El Pais said on Tuesday.

Five of the men are still at large but the sixth, Jamal Zougam, is among a group of suspects arrested at the weekend.

Zougam was recognised by two passengers of one of the trains that was bombed on Thursday morning. Two hundred people died and nearly 1 500 others were wounded when the bombs exploded during the morning rush hour.

El Pais did not give the identity of the other five men who are wanted for questioning.

Police believe that other nationalities could be part of the group that carried out the attacks, said the paper.

Citing anti-terrorist sources, the paper said that Jordanian national Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi could be the mastermind behind the attacks.

Zarqawi, one of Washington's prime suspects in a string of bomb attacks in Iraq, is suspected of maintaining ties with the al-Qaeda network.

A reward for information leading to his capture has recently doubled to $10m.

Videotape

Investigators also believe that a videotape in which an unidentified man has claimed responsibility for the train bombings in the name of al-Qaeda, is authentic, El Pais added.

The video, found in a rubbish bin near a Madrid mosque late on Saturday, featured a man speaking Arabic who said: "We claim responsibility for what happened in Madrid just two-and-a-half years after the attacks in New York and Washington."

Evidence is also mounting that the bombings in Madrid may be conneted to a bloody attack in Morocco in 2003.

One of five suspects being held by Spanish police in connection with Thursday's attack in Spain had travelled to Morocco, then left on April 20 2003 - just before the May 16 attacks in Casablanca that killed 45 people, officials said on Monday.

"There is a possible link between the network that committed the Casablanca attacks and the one that committed the Madrid attacks," an official said from Morocco's capital, Rabat.

US authorities believe evidence suggests an al-Qaeda tie to Madrid's bombings, said Asa Hutchinson, Washington's undersecretary of homeland security.

"I'm satisfied there are connections to al-Qaeda," Hutchinson told ABC television. "The depth of that connection and the total level of responsibility has not yet been determined."

The Casablanca bombings were blamed on Salafia Jihadia, a secretive, radical Islamic group suspected of links to al-Qaeda.

- AP