| More detail on yesterday's busts... |
Spanish police arrested 16 suspected militants yesterday, including followers of Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi and men preparing to become suicide bombers in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said. It was the second European swoop in two days against suspected backers of the Iraqi insurgency, following Germany's arrest of three Iraqis on Tuesday. Eleven of the suspects in Spain were followers of Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said. "Many of them expressed their will to become martyrs for Islam, demonstrating they are extremely radical and dangerous," the ministry said in a statement. It said they belonged to "an established network in our country, tied to the terrorist organization Ansar Al-Islam/Zarqawi network".The other five were suspected of aiding the cell that carried out the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004, which killed 191 people and wounded 1,900 three days before a general election. One Madrid train bombing suspect who escaped police is believed already to have carried out a suicide attack in Iraq some time between May 12-19, the ministry said. He was named as Mohamed Afalah, who police say fled the scene when seven prime suspects for the train bombing blew themselves up on April 3, 2004 after being surrounded by police in a suburban Madrid apartment. The blast also killed a special police agent.
Police and intelligence sources say Iraqi militants have recruited fighters in several European countries to join the insurgency against the Iraqi government and the US-led coalition supporting it. Investigations in Spain, Italy, Germany and Sweden suggest Ansar Al-Islam — a group with which the United States linked Zarqawi before the Iraq war — has emerged as the most prominent militant group engaged in fundraising and recruitment. A French intelligence chief said last month that five young men from a single Paris district had already died in Iraq, one in a suicide attack. The ministry statement said potential suicide bombers in Spain were linked to a central operation in Syria dedicated to "recruiting holy warriors (using the Internet) and sending them to Iraq with the goal of committing suicide attacks against the coalition forces". It said the two main recruiters, both Moroccans, were arrested by Syria in May 2004 and sent back to Morocco.