Three more held in Madrid

2004-03-31 13:37

Madrid - Spain said on Tuesday it was investigating an extremist Moroccan Islamist group for possible involvement in the Madrid train bombings, as police arrested another three suspects over the attacks.

Interior Minister Angel Acebes said police were probing the main suspects behind the March 11 blasts and "their links to terrorist or fundamentalist groups, particularly the Moroccan Islamist Combattant Group (MICG)."

The group is thought to have carried out last year's bombings in Morocco's biggest city Casablanca, including a Spanish club, killing 45 people including 12 suicide bombers.

Spain is currently holding 18 people over the train bombings, which killed 191 people.

Fourteen of the detained suspects - 10 Moroccans, two Indians and two Spaniards - are facing provisional charges of murder and terrorism.

Acebes said Spanish police had arrested another three people - two Syrians and a Spaniard - in connection with the bombings.

"We can confirm that several of those materially involved in carrying out the attacks and several who were involved to a (lesser) degree are among those detained," said Acebes.

Judicial sources named the Syrians detained on Tuesday as Walid Altaraki Al-Masri and Mohamad Badr Eddin Akkad, both believed to have visited a house in Morata de Tajuna, 30km south of Madrid, where police believe the bombs were assembled.

Spanish police have handed Moroccan security services details of fingerprints found in the house to try to identify them, the Moroccan Aujourd'hui Le Maroc newspaper said on Tuesday.

Acebes said the third man among the latest batch of arrests was Spanish national Antonio Toro Castro, suspected of providing the bombers with the explosives used in the attacks on four suburban trains.

Toro Castro's brother-in-law Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a former miner, is also in custody on suspicion of obtaining and selling explosives used in the blasts.

Several of the 10 Moroccans provisionally charged are believed to have links to the MICG, which recruits its militants from the slums of Casablanca and Fez.

El Periodico newspaper named the fugitive Abdelkrim Mejjati, the MICG's chief of operations, as the mastermind behind the Madrid blasts. He is believed to have helped prepare the May 2003 Casablanca attacks.

In the early hours of Tuesday investigating judge Juan del Olmo placed two more suspects - a 10th Moroccan and a Syrian - in preventive detention following extensive questioning, but released three other suspects.

A judicial source said Syrian national Basel Ghayoun, picked up last week in Ujena, south of Madrid, was believed to be one of 10 bombers, along with Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan hauled in two days after the bombings.

Acebes said lines of investigation were ongoing in Morocco, Britain and Germany, adding that Spain believed one of eight terrorist suspects detained in a series of raids in Britain on Tuesday could turn out to have links to the bombings.

- AFP