Bombers were 'police informers'
2004-04-29 21:14
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Madrid - The government launched an investigation Thursday into a newspaper report that two suspects in the Madrid terror bombings - both accused of providing dynamite for the attacks - were police informants on drugs, explosives and weapons trafficking cases.
The Madrid daily El Mundo, quoting police sources, said a Moroccan named Rafa Zuher, arrested on March 20, helped the bombing cell obtain 200kg of compressed dynamite in Asturias, a mining region of northern Spain, through a Spaniard named Eduardo Suarez Trashorras, a former miner who also is in custody.
The newspaper said both worked as informants for police - Zuher passed on information about low-level drug deals involving dagga and Ecstasy in Madrid and the Spaniard collaborated with police in Asturias on trafficking in weapons, explosives and drugs.
The interior ministry released a statement saying deputy minister Antonio Camacho had ordered an investigation into the El Mundo report and said that if the results of the probe warranted it, they would be turned over to a judge.
Didn't search car
The March 11 attacks, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 2 000, have been blamed on a Morocco-based group of Islamic extremists with possible links to al-Qaeda. Eighteen people have been charged in the case, and one more is in custody waiting to go before a judge. Fourteen of the 18 are Moroccan.
El Mundo said the judge leading the investigation had taken the rare step of sending Zuher and Suarez Trashorras to jails different from the one where most of the bombing suspects are being held.
The government has said cell members obtained the dynamite in Asturias about a week before the bombings and drove it to Madrid in a stolen Volkswagen Golf.
A highway patrolman stopped them for a moving violation, but the car had not yet been reported stolen, and all the men in the car had their residence papers in order, so the officer did not search the car or open the trunk, where the dynamite was, the interior ministry says.
- SAPA