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Terror suspects shifted to Madrid

MADRID: Fourteen suspected Islamist militants detained on suspicion of planning a terror attack in Barcelona have been transferred to Madrid for questioning at the National Court, said officials on Sunday.

Investigators were painstakingly sifting through evidence uncovered during Saturday’s arrests, which were triggered by reports from several European intelligence agencies, said an Interior Ministry spokesman.

The suspects — 12 Pakistanis and two Indian nationals — were detained in the northern port city’s Raval neighbourhood, home to many Arabic-speaking and Muslim immigrants.

Police made the arrests as they searched five homes in the area, seizing three large bags containing four timers and substances that could have been used to make bombs, said the spokesman on condition of anonymity in keeping with government rules.

Explosives experts were analysing the seized material to determine if some of it was triacetone triperoxide, or TATP.

Police laboratories had not arrived at final conclusions, said the spokesman.

TATP is an unstable explosive compound used by Islamist militants in the deadly 2005 London transit bombings, by Palestinian suicide bombers and Richard Reid, a British national who attempted to detonate a shoe bomb on a U.S.-bound aircraft.

After the Barcelona arrests, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said the suspects appeared to form part of a well-organised Islamist militant group.

Leading newspaper El Mundo said the arrests could have been linked to the arrival in Barcelona of an unnamed suspect known by several intelligence agencies.

Joan Saura, the Interior Ministry’s representative in Catalonia, told regional lawmakers at Barcelona’s Parliament on Saturday that despite the arrests he did not view Barcelona as “a city at risk.”

Europe’s worst Islamist-linked terror attack took place in Madrid on March 11, 2004, when bombs went off in railway carriages during the morning rush hour near the city’s Atocha station.

The attack killed 191 persons and injured more than 1,800. Twenty-one persons have been convicted of involvement in that attack.

The attacks were claimed by Muslim militants who said they had acted on behalf of the Al-Qaida to avenge the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq, but Spain’s courts found no evidence that the Al-Qaeda ordered, knew about or financed the attacks.

Three days after the carnage, Spanish voters ousted the conservative party of Jose Maria Aznar, staunch Washington ally who had backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Spanish authorities are keen to ensure general elections due here on March 9 are not influenced by an attack by Islamist militants or the Basque separatist group ETA.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, Spanish police have arrested hundreds of Islamist terrorism suspects, many in connection with the Madrid attack.

In recent years, police have also focused on cells suspected of recruiting mujahideen fighters and suicide bombers, or of collecting money to finance Al-Qaeda-linked groups abroad. — AP

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