Belgium is to extradite a Moroccan man accused of being linked to the Madrid bomb attack in March last year. Youssef Belhadj, 28, was first arrested by the Belgian authorities on 20 March 2004 but released three months later due to a lack of evidence. He was arrested again in Brussels on 1 February 2005. A court in Brussels gave the final agreement to his extradition, after his appeal failed. Belhadj stands accused of being an Al Qaeda spokesman and of belonging to a Moroccan militant Islamic group. Earlier this month, the Spanish authorities arrested another Moroccan man who had links to five suspects in the bombing, one of them being Belhadj. The Spanish Interior Minister said Jouad el Bouzouti, 21, was suspected of having links to five Moroccan Islamic extremists and the Algerian Allekama Lamari. Lamari was one of seven terror suspects who committed suicide when their apartment was surrounded by police last April in the Leganes suburb of Madrid. El Bouzouti is also accused of having direct contact with Mohamed Afalah and Abdelmajid Bouchar who escaped from the Leganes apartment. The authorities believe he was linked to Brahim and Mohamed Moussaten who are currently in prison for their alleged involvement in the attacks. And he also stands accused of having telephone conversations with Belhadj.
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CEUTA-Police have arrested two prisoners for alleged links to Islamic terrorism in a prison in Spain's north African enclave Ceuta. The Spanish Ministry of the Interior said police had also seized a large quantity of documents in Arabic, French and Spanish which were found in their cell. These documents were being analysed after the arrests on Tuesday night. They named the two prisoners as Redouan Ben Fraima, 40, who is Moroccan and Redouan Ahmed AlaÂ, 23, who was born in Ceuta. They were both serving sentences at a jail in Ceuta for offences unconnected with terrorism. A judge authorized a raid on the cell which the two prisoners were sharing in the jail in Ceuta. The latest arrests bring the number of people detained this year in connection with Islamic terrorism to 11.