 A suspected Islamic extremist believed linked to a group that planned attacks on key targets in Madrid was found dead in his prison cell in the northern Spanish city of Zaragoza after apparently hanging himself, prison officials told AFP. They said Mustafa Zanibar, a Moroccan, was found by prison staff as they came to deliver lunch. The sources said he was strangled by his belt in his isolation cell. The 41-year-old Zanibar was sentenced to 29 years in jail in 1996 for murder after burning a compatriot alive at El Ejido in southern Spain. His conversion to radical Islam came after his sentencing.
| Before that he was just a homicidal maniac... |
Spain's top investigating magistrate, Baltasar Garzon, accused Zanibar of belonging to a terrorist organization in the course of a probe into an alleged plot to blow up the Real Madrid soccer stadium, the main law courts and several railway stations. Investigations following attacks on Madrid suburban trains last March in which 191 people were killed and 1,900 injured has thrown increasing light on a network of Islamic radicals, with ramifications in Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland, according to judicial officials. Last October, Garzon ordered the arrest of about 30 people who were suspected of being involved in the alleged plot to attack targets in Madrid. The sources said Garzon believed that a cell of activists involved in the alleged plot was formed in prison between 2001 and 2003, which explained the connection with Zanibar.
| An "assisted" suicide, perhaps? |
"'Ere you go, Mustafa!"
"Wot's that?"
"It's a belt. You use it to hold yer pants up. Here, lemme help you on with it."
"Hey! That ain't my waist!" |
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