Algerian Detained in Spain Bombings Probe

MADRID, Spain – Police said Tuesday they have detained an Algerian who allegedly talked about a terrorist attack in Madrid two months before it happened, and the death toll in the bombings rose to 201.

Ali Amrous was picked up Saturday in the Basque city of San Sebastian to learn if he had advance knowledge of Thursday’s terrorist attacks in Madrid, police told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, police identified five new Moroccan suspects in the train bombings, a newspaper reported, and a French investigator told the AP he has found a direct link between prime suspect Jamal Zougam and the spiritual leader of a clandestine extremist group believed involved in last May’s deadly attacks in Casablanca, Morocco.

Incoming Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who was swept into power during elections Sunday, three days after the Madrid attacks, harshly criticized the Iraq war, which was supported by his predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar.

“I have said many times that the Iraq war was a great disaster, the occupation continues to be a disaster – it only generates more violence,” Zapatero told radio station Cadena Ser on Monday.

Most Spaniards opposed Aznar’s support of the Iraq war, and many believed he made Spain a target for terrorists by his pro-U.S. policies.

Amrous, an apparent indigent, was first arrested in January after a neighborhood disturbance and made the threatening comments while being questioned by police, saying that “we will fill Madrid with the dead,” authorities said. They added that they doubted he was connected at a high level with any terrorist group but may have known about the attacks in advance.

He was expected to be brought to Madrid for questioning. Police said they did not believe Amrous had any contacts with the armed Basque separatist group ETA, which the Spanish government initially blamed for the attacks.

The death toll from Thursday’s commuter train attacks in the Spanish capital rose to 201 with the death of a 45-year-old woman, authorities said. The toll is now one short of the 202 people killed in the 2002 nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia – the worst terrorist attack since Sept. 11.

Zougam has already been identified by a Spanish judge as a follower of Imad Yarkas, the alleged leader of Spain’s al-Qaida cell, who remains jailed on suspicion he helped plan the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Police believe the five new Moroccan suspects took part in the bombings, the Madrid daily El Pais reported Tuesday, without identifying the new suspects by name.

Interior Ministry spokesman Juan de Dios Colmenero said he could not confirm the report.

El Pais also reported that two Indians who are believed to have sold telephone cards to three arrested Moroccans were released. De Dios said he could not confirm the report.

The bombs were triggered by cell phones, and investigators were able to find and arrest the three Moroccans and two Indians on Saturday because a cell-phone card was found in an unexploded bomb and traced.

Investigators scrambled to learn the scope of the operation that carried out the Madrid attacks.

A possible link between them and Casablanca gained credibility Tuesday after French investigator Jean-Charles Brisard said he has found a direct tie between Zougam and Mohamed Fizazi, a spiritual leader of Salafia Jihadia, which allegedly was behind the Casablanca attack and which has been linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network.

The suicide bombings in Casablanca killed 33 people and 12 bombers.

In a telephone call with Yarkas that Spanish police monitored in August 2001, Zougam said he had met with Fizazi, who was among 87 people sentenced in Morocco last August in a trial that centered on the Casablanca attacks. Fizazi received a 30-year sentence.

The monitored call is cited in a 600,000-page report by investigative Judge Baltasar Garzon, who is probing the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, said Brisard, who spoke with the AP by telephone. Brisard has access to Garzon’s documents because he is helping to probe the attacks for lawyers representing some of its victims’ families.

The Garzon document says that in the monitored phone call, Zougam told Yarkas: “On Friday, I went to see Fizazi and I told him that if he needed money we could help him with our brothers,” Brisard said.

Fizazi previously preached at a mosque in Hamburg, Germany, frequented by some of the hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

Zougam also has connections that possibly lead to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Moroccan official said. Al-Zarqawi is a key operative working with al-Qaida who has been blamed in attacks in Jordan, Iraq and elsewhere.

The other two arrested Moroccans are Zougam’s half brother, Mohamed Chaoui, 34, and Mohamed Bekkali, 31.

Spanish radio station Cadena Ser reported Monday that police found a witness who saw Zougam on a train that was bombed. But Interior Minister Angel Acebes said authorities had no knowledge of a witness.

The radio, quoting unidentified police sources, said the witness said he saw Zougam on the train headed for Madrid’s Atocha station, leaning against a door.

Both Cadena Ser and the newspaper El Pais reported that police believe Zougam actually left bombs on the train. Ibanez said there was no proof of that.

Zougam’s alleged associations to terror suspects date back more than a decade, when he was introduced to Abdelaziz Benyaich in 1993, Moroccan authorities said. Benyaich, who has dual French and Moroccan citizenship, was arrested in Spain in 2003 in connection with the Casablanca bombings.

Morocco is seeking Benyaich’s extradition and claims he has had contact with al-Zarqawi, whom German authorities reportedly believe was appointed by al-Qaida’s leadership to arrange attacks in Europe.

Moroccan officials also believe al-Zarqawi ordered the attacks in Casablanca, and U.S. officials blamed al-Zarqawi for March 2 bombings in Iraq that killed at least 181 Shiite Muslim pilgrims. The Jordanian militant also is believed to have been behind the 2002 killing of Laurence Foley, a U.S. aid worker in Jordan.

Authorities have been tracking Islamic extremist activity in Spain since the mid-1990s and say it was an important staging ground, along with Germany, for the Sept. 11 attacks.