Drugs paid for Madrid attacks

2004-04-01 15:36

Madrid - The March 11 train bomb attacks in Madrid which killed 191 people and injured 1 900 others were partly financed by drug trafficking, Spanish media reported on Thursday, quoting judicial sources close to the enquiry.

"Drug trafficking operations allowed a particular relationship between certain persons accused, facilitating possible criminal financing and the obtaining of explosive substances and detonators through this special relationship whose final result was the March 11 explosion in Madrid," El Pais quoted investigating judge Juan del Olmo as saying.

El Pais, which quoted the judge's committal order for Syrian suspect Basel Ghayoun, believed to be one of the bombers, reported that a 20kg stash of hashish and cocaine had been found during a police search of the residence of another suspect, Moroccan Hamid Ahmidan.

According to La Vanguardia daily, the drugs were traded for explosives.

Former Spanish miner Jose Emilio Suarez, one of 20 people held in connection with Spain's worst terrorist attack, is suspected of having supplied 110kg of Goma 2 eco explosive stolen over a period of months from a mine where he worked in Asturias, northern Spain.

In return, according to La Vanguardia, he received 30kg of hashish on February 28, whereupon the bombers transported the explosives to a house at Morata de Tajuna south west of Madrid.

On March 11 a team of bombers loaded 13 backpacks full of explosive onto four early morning commuter trains which blew up as they entered three stations in the Spanish capital.

La Vanguardia reported that investigators believe the suspects have links with a sleeper cell comprising members of the Moroccan Islamist Combatant Group (MICG) thought to be behind bombings in Morocco's biggest city Casablanca in May last year.

The Barcelona daily added investigators believe the cell was activated on the orders of an al-Qaeda operative in Asia with the target and modus operandi decided in Spain itself.

According to ABC daily the head of the sleeper cell is Moroccan Jamal Ahmidan, who was on Wednesday named as one of six people against whom Spanish authorities have issued international arrest warrants.

ABC said Ahmidan had been indoctrinated by radical Muslims while serving time in a Moroccan jail for drug trafficking, adding he was the suspect who drove the drug haul to Asturias to exchange it for the explosives.

- AFP