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| Europe |
| Spanish downplay Nasar link to London bombings |
| 2005-07-12 |
| Spanish officials have downplayed British press reports that a Syrian-born Spaniard -- Mustafa Setmarian Nasar -- who is linked to al Qaeda activities and the Madrid train bombings, was also behind the London bombings last week. "That is not a fact that has been even minimally confirmed," Spain's secretary of state for security, Antonio Camacho, said at a public appearance in the town of El Escorial, near Madrid, on Monday. "The English authorities have not transmitted that to us," added Camacho, whose rank is equivalent to a deputy minister of interior. Setmarian was indicted in 2003 by Judge Baltasar Garzon and is wanted on a Spanish arrest warrant. Garzon accused Setmarian of helping to organize one of the first al Qaeda type cells in Spain in the middle 1990s. Setmarian has not been in Spain for about a decade. He later spent time in London, where he was director of an Islamic extremist magazine, Al Ansar, and has also been in direct contact with Osama bin Laden and spent time in Afghanistan in terrorist training camps, according to Spanish court documents. Setmarian is linked to some of the 24 al Qaeda suspects currently on trial in Madrid. The group includes three charged with helping to plan the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. The suspected leader of the cell, a Syrian-born Spaniard, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarakas, testified during the trial that he knew Setmarian. Setmarian has not been charged in the separate investigation into the Madrid train bombings last year that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500. But late last year, the prosecutor in the train bombings asked the investigating magistrate to include information about Setmarian in that case. A National Police spokesman told CNN on Monday that British press reports regarding Setmarian were unfounded. Setmarian's name may have emerged, the spokesman indicated, because Spanish police attended a meeting on Saturday with London police -- as did police from various other nations -- and a starting point was to compare information on known terrorists suspects. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 yeah, that's right. How could it be that they were attacked because Aznar supported Bush in Iraq if the attacks in London, Italy and France were planned in 1998? |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-07-12 08:28 |