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| Europe |
| Moroccan Suspect in Madrid Bombing Is Tied to Sept. 11 Suspect |
| 2004-03-15 |
| EFL: Authorities are investigating whether the terrorist bombings in Madrid last week and in Casablanca last year may be linked, focusing on a Moroccan who was arrested in Spain over the weekend, Moroccan and Spanish officials told The Associated Press on Monday. The suspect, Jamal Zougam, left Morocco just before the May 16, 2003, suicide attacks that killed 45 people in Casablanca, officials said. Skipped town before blast, sounds like a controller. "There is a possible link between the network that committed the Casablanca attacks and the one that committed the Madrid attacks," a highly placed Moroccan official who spoke on condition of anonymity told the AP in Rabat. Spanish Interior Minister spokesman Richard Ibanez said Spain also believes a link is possible and authorities have traveled to Morocco seeking information on three Moroccans arrested in connection with the Madrid bombings. Spanish radio station Cadena Ser said police have located a witness who saw Zougam on one of four rush-hour Madrid trains that were bombed Thursday, killing 200 people. Spanish officials declined comment. The witness said he saw Zougam on the train headed for Madrid’s Atocha station, leaning against a door, the radio said, quoting unidentified police sources. The witness, a Spanish man, was not injured in the bombing, the radio said. Both Cadena Ser and the newspaper El Pais reported that police believe Zougam actually left bombs on the train, but Ibanez said there is no proof of this. Some investigators suspect Zougam played that role but it is not the official line of investigation, Ibanez said. More likely he was keeping an eye on the people placing the bombs. Unless they were working shorthanded, he’d be to important to handle live explosives. El Pais said police have concluded the Madrid bombers belonged to the same network of Islamic groups responsible for the Casablanca attacks. Begins with letter "A". Meanwhile, a Bush administration official said U.S. authorities believe evidence suggests an al-Qaida tie to the Madrid bombings. "I’m satisfied there are connections to al-Qaida," Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary of homeland security, told ABC’s "Good Morning America." "The depth of that connection and the total level of responsibility has not yet been determined." "It clearly shows that increased ability on their part and certainly it is going to cause the international community to even take it more seriously than in the past," Hutchinson said. Or to shove their heads further up their asses. Zougam, two other Moroccans and two Indians are being questioned in Thursday’s attack. Traced the phone card from the un-exploded bomb to them. Zougam was one of thousands of Moroccans put under surveillance by authorities after the Casablanca bombings, the Moroccan official said. In a Spanish indictment issued last September, Zougam also was described as a "follower" of Imad Yarkas, the alleged leader of Spain’s al-Qaida cell who was jailed for allegedly helping plan the Sept. 11. 2001, attacks. It was the latest suggestion that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist group may have been involved in the bombings. Yarkas, whose alias is Abu Dahdah, is in Spanish custody. Since the bombing worked so well, I’d expect a kidnapping or a bomb threat to spring him from jail. Zougam’s alleged associations to terror suspects date back more than a decade, when he was introduced to Abdelaziz Benyaich in 1993, Moroccan authorities said. Benyaich, a French-Moroccan national, was arrested in Spain in 2003 in connection with the Casablanca bombings. Morocco is seeking Benyaich’s extradition and claims he has had contact with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant whom German authorities have reportedly said they believe was appointed by al-Qaida’s leadership to arrange attacks in Europe. Moroccan officials also believe Zarqawi ordered the attacks in Casablanca. And maybe Spain? One of Benyaich’s brothers was convicted in the Casablanca attacks and another was killed in November 2001 in eastern Afghanistan. Moroccan officials also said Zougam had repeated contacts in Tangiers with Pierre Robert, a French convert to Islam who was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to life in prison on charges of trying to organize an uprising in the North African nation. The Casablanca bombings were blamed on Salafia Jihadia, a secretive, radical Islamic group suspected of links to al-Qaida. Zougam also is familiar to French anti-terrorism officials. He allegedly had links to David Courtailler, who is standing trial on Wednesday in Paris on charges of criminal association in connection with a terrorist group that recruited fighters for Afghanistan through the mid-1990s. David Courtailler is the brother of Jerome Courtailler, a Frenchman who was acquitted in 2002 of plotting an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris. He was acquitted on procedural errors by Dutch police and a lack of evidence. Another family affair. Jerome Courtailler once lived in Paris with Sept. 11 suspect Zacharias Moussaoui and was friends with Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, who has admitted plotting to attack U.S. targets in Belgium. That would be the Kleine Brogel nuke base. According to French court documents, Zougam and David Courtailler met at a mosque in Madrid in 1998. Spanish officials found radical Islamic writings and documents, including a statement from a radical group in Tajikistan, at Zougam’s residence. The September 2003 indictment in Madrid targeted Yarkas and 34 others, including bin Laden, for terrorist activities connected to al-Qaida. Zougam was not indicted. The indictment showed police had searched Zougam’s home at least once, turning up a video of mujaheddin fighters in Dagestan, Russia, and phone numbers of three members of the Madrid al-Qaida cell allegedly led by Yarkas. The five suspects in the Madrid bombings were arrested after a cell phone and prepaid card were found in an explosives-filled gym bag on one of the bombed trains. Officials said the phones were apparently used as detonators on the 10 bombs that tore through the trains. El Pais, citing the interior ministry, reported all three Moroccans have links to Yarkas. Authorities in Morocco said they could not comment on the report. Authorities have been tracking Islamic extremist activity in Spain since the mid-1990s and say it was an important staging ground, along with Germany, for the Sept. 11 attacks. European intelligence agencies were also working trying to identify a purported al-Qaida operative who claimed in a videotape that the terror group bombed trains in Madrid to punish Spain’s backing of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The tape was discovered in a trash bin near Madrid’s largest mosque on Saturday. An Arabic-speaking man called a Madrid TV station to say the tape was there, Spain’s Interior Ministry said. The man said the taped claim of responsibility for the train bombings came from "the military spokesman for al-Qaida in Europe, Abu Dujan al Afghani." The Interior Ministry released details about its contents, and intelligence agents were trying to identify the man, verify his claims and establish Abu Dujan al Afghani’s identity. Interesting |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 Benyaich, a French-Moroccan national, was arrested in Spain in 2003 in connection with the Casablanca bombings. Morocco is seeking Benyaich’s extradition So extradite him already. . |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-3-15 9:43:26 PM |