Spain Arrests 20 in Roundup of Islamic Recruiting Network

[SR-25]

MADRID, Jan. 10 - The Spanish police arrested 20 people today in connection with a recruiting network that sent Islamic militants to join the insurgency in Iraq, including an Algerian suspected of killing 19 Italians in a suicide bombing in 2003, the Interior Ministry said.

The suspects are the third group to be arrested in Spain on such charges in less than seven months, adding to fears that the country remains fertile recruiting territory for Islamic extremism nearly two years after the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people on March 11, 2004.

The network broken up today was the most sophisticated of the three, consisting of cells in Barcelona and Madrid that raised money, falsified documents, and recruited and indoctrinated potential radicals, the ministry said. They were then sent to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the American forces' most wanted man in Iraq, and other militant leaders, the ministry added.

The network had links with militant groups in countries around the world, including France, Belgium, Holland, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, and Syria, the ministry said, without offering further details.

"This operations shows once again that the government is in a permanent fight against international terrorism, a task that we must pursue with all possible attention and determination," the interior minister, José Antonio Alonso, said today at a press conference in Madrid.

Mr. Alonso also confirmed suspicions that some of the militants recruited for duty in Iraq have begun returning home to begin operations in their native countries or adopted homelands.

One of the network's missions, Mr. Alonso said, was to shelter veterans of the Iraqi conflict who had returned home to scout for possible terrorist targets in Europe and to help identify promising recruits.

Most of the group's recruiting appears to have occurred within Spain, but investigators said it also helped ferry militants from North Africa to the insurgency in Iraq.

Many of the recruits were funneled through Syria and Jordan on their way to Iraq, where they were to prepare for carrying out suicide attacks against the American-led forces and their allies, officials said.

It was not clear how many had been sent to join the insurgency, or how many had participated in attacks.

But Mr. Alonso said that Italian and Spanish security forces had confirmed that one recruit was responsible for a suicide attack in Nasiriya, Iraq, in November 2003 that killed 28 people, including 19 Italians and 9 Iraqis. At the time, it was the most lethal attack carried out by insurgents since Saddam Hussein was removed from power in April of 2003.

In his comments today, Mr. Alonso said that there were no indications that the group was preparing an imminent attack on Spanish soil. But he said that they clearly had the capacity to carry one out, and might have begun preparing a plan to strike a European target in the future.

The suspects arrestedtoday included 15 Moroccans, three Spaniards, a Turk and an Algerian. They were detained in Madrid, Barcelona and in the Basque region of northern Spain.

The Interior Ministry did not indicate whether any of those arrested had been to Iraq or were planning to go.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/in...cnd-spain.html