| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| Spanish looking for 3/11 masterminds |
| 2004-03-24 |
| Almost two weeks into the Madrid train bombing investigation, Spanish police are fairly certain Moroccan Islamist radicals carried out the attack but they are far from concluding who ordered it. Security forces believe the perpetrators are linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network or another radical group but sources say they do not know who ordered or financed the attack. "The inspiration, the ideological support for this, came from outside Spain," a source close to the inquiry told Reuters. He conceded that penetrating the clandestine network of extremist groups was proving difficult. "Everything points to Morocco but the radical Islamic world is very complex." Investigators are looking at the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, but that is only one of a number of known Islamist militant groups in North Africa. The 13 suspects in detention all lived in Spain, most of them Moroccans in Madrid's multiracial district of Lavapies. Sources say investigators suspect other extremists may have come into Spain to lead or join the plot -- and fled afterward. Investigators believe that whoever made a videotape with a purported al Qaeda claim of responsibility found by police after the attack was linked to the bombings, but they are not sure if, as the tape says, they represent al Qaeda Europe. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |