One year after the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history, the Spanish police continue to uncover and thwart new plots involving Islamic militants, according to senior Spanish intelligence and law enforcement officials. Despite sweeping measures to improve their ability to investigate potential terrorist threats since the March 11, 2004, bomb attacks that left 191 people dead, the officials estimate that there are hundreds of people scattered in cells around the country committed to attacking centers of power in Spain.The police have found indications of a cell of Pakistanis that they suspect was planning an attack on a high-profile target in Barcelona. They also found evidence of a cell of North Africans in Madrid that apparently wanted to attack the High Court in the capital, the officials said. "We have been lucky that our investigations have managed to abort other plots before acts of terrorism took place," Juan Fernando López Aguilar, the justice minister, said in an interview. "That means the threats have not disappeared."
After the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks on the United States and the train bombing in Madrid, European governments have devoted new resources to rooting out a terrorist threat that is not yet fully understood. France, Belgium, Germany and Italy have made dozens of terrorism-related arrests in the past year, and Britain enacted a tough new package of laws on Friday. Spain has been particularly aggressive about making arrests. Mr. López Aguilar said the government had detained about 1,000 people in terrorism-related cases in the past year, although most have been released.
In the Madrid bombing, Spain is still hunting down at least half a dozen suspects, who are probably outside the country. "The great majority of the perpetrators are identified, dead or in prison," said a senior intelligence official at the Guardia Civil, or Civil Guard, a police force with military and civilian functions. "But we cannot say that we have all of them. There are questions that remain unclear. The most important is: Who masterminded March 11?" Of 79 suspects believed to be involved in the Madrid bombings, 24 are in jail and awaiting trial. Seven suspects blew themselves up in a Madrid apartment three weeks after the bombing to avoid capture.
The evidence of a Pakistani cell has emerged since the bombings. Last September, the police arrested 10 Pakistanis suspected of belonging to a support network for Islamic militants. The raid turned up a video showing details of a number of buildings in Barcelona, including the 40-story Mapfre Tower and the 44-story Hotel Arts, the two buildings known as Spain's "twin towers," a senior Spanish intelligence official said. The police also seized documents and videos calling for an Islamic holy war, several pounds of cocaine and more than $20,000 in cash. The group apparently raised money through drug trafficking, falsifying documents and extortion, the intelligence officials said. They said they had evidence that the cell sent the money to cells in Pakistan that were loyal to Al Qaeda. But no link to the March 11 attacks was found. The senior intelligence official at the Civil Guard said the group was sending money to the same Islamic militants who killed the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 in Pakistan.
Fernando Reinares, a special adviser to the Interior Ministry and a terrorism specialist with the Elcano Institute, said, "Apparently they were taking the first steps of what could be plans for committing terrorist actions." Another cell was uncovered last fall, when the police carried out an operation against a group of Algerian and Moroccan radicals who were believed to be planning an attack on Madrid's High Court and perhaps other targets. Using informers, investigators learned that the plotters had started to try to procure explosives for the operation. Concerned that an attack was imminent, the government decided to close down the cell. Investigators brought the information to Judge Baltasar Garzón, Spain's highest antiterrorism magistrate, who ordered the arrests of more than 30 people, mostly North Africans, suspected in the plot. "This particular plot was pretty close," Mr. López Aguilar said. "But it didn't happen."Investigators are trying to piece together whether there are connections between operatives of Al Qaeda in Spain and the Madrid bombings. Some of those arrested had been in contact with Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, a Syrian believed to be the leader of a Qaeda cell in Spain and who is in Spanish custody in connection with the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a senior intelligence official said. There were also contacts with Allekem Laamari, an Algerian killed in the suicide bombing after the Madrid attacks, the official added. Evidence about the cells indicates that Spain is still a target for terrorists despite the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq. The Madrid bombers left behind a video declaring that the attacks were an answer to the Bush administration's "crimes," particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Spain has troops in Afghanistan, Prime Minister José Luis RodrÃÂguez Zapatero, elected three days after the attacks, pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq.
In the past year, Spain has taken extraordinary measures to improve its ability to investigate potential Islamic terrorist plots. Until March 11, 2004, most of Spain's counterterrorism efforts were focused on ETA, the Basque separatist movement. The Civil Guard, the police force and the National Intelligence Center, Spain's external intelligence agency, have been reorganized under a unified command and meet once a week. The agencies have also created a joint database of suspects' fingerprints, DNA, voices, documents, car rentals and travel, as well as details about arms and explosives transfers. There are also plans to recruit 1,000 more officers and 130 Arab translators and interpreters.
There is no concrete evidence from any foreign intelligence agency of a phone call or message that suggests that the Madrid plot was organized from outside Spain. Jorge Dezcallar, the former head of the National Intelligence Center, the equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency, was quoted in El PaÃÂs on Thursday as saying that after the attacks he asked the National Security Agency in Washington to look for evidence of links with groups outside Spain, but none were found. Spanish intelligence officials said they were not convinced by the claims of Sayed Ahmed Rabei Osman, who was arrested in Milan in June and extradited to Spain in December. Although Mr. Rabei Osman boasted in conversations recorded by the Italian police that he organized the Madrid bombings, there is no corroborating evidence of his involvement, Spanish officials said.
Osman is a former Egyptian soldier and a member of al-Zawahiri's mob. My guess is that he's a little further up the chain of command than some of the 3/11 cannon fodder and was probably in touch with Fakhet, which may have been why there hasn't been much in the way of evidence.