Madrid Hunt Targets Moroccan Group

Spain's interior minister on Tuesday named a Moroccan extremist group for the first time as the main focus of the probe into the Madrid terror bombings that killed 191 people.

Ten of the 18 people in custody in the case are Moroccan or Moroccan-born with Spanish citizenship, minister Angel Acebes said.

He said authorities will investigate links between prime suspects in detention and "terrorist groups or fundamentalist groups, very especially the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group."

The group has surfaced in Spanish news reports but this was the first time Acebes or any other Spanish official has said publicly that it was possibly behind the March 11 attacks.

In addition to the detainees of Moroccan origin, the Spanish authorities are holding two Indians, two Spaniards and four Syrians or Syrian-born Spaniards, Acebes said.

"Investigators' priority is the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group," Acebes said. "Other options are not being ruled out, but primarily the investigation is going to go in this direction."

Moroccan investigators also have named the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group along with Salafia Jihadia as the principal extremist groups they were focusing on. Morocco has accused Salafia Jihadia of organizing five nearly simultaneous attacks on May 16, 2003, in Casablanca, Morocco, that killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers.

The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group is a forerunner to the Salafia Jihadia and is regarded as the first radical jihad movement in Morocco.

Acebes said three more people had been arrested — on Monday, a Spaniard who is the brother-in-law of a Spaniard accused of supplying dynamite to the bombers, and two people of Syrian origin arrested Tuesday in connection with a rural house where the bombs allegedly were assembled. That brought to 18 the number in custody.

Fourteen people have been charged in the case. Judge Juan Del Olmo charged two more suspects early Tuesday, court officials said: Basel Ghayoun, a Syrian, was charged with mass murder and belonging to a terrorist organization, while Hamed Ahmidam, a Moroccan, was charged with collaborating with a terrorist organization.

Court officials said two witnesses, including one who was injured in the attack, had recognized Ghayoun on one of the commuter trains that were bombed.

Both of the accused said they were innocent but acknowledged they knew some of the other suspects being held in connection with the attack, including prime suspect Jamal Zougam, court officials said.

The charges stop short of a formal indictment but suggest that the court has strong evidence against the suspects. They can be jailed for up to two years while investigators gather more evidence.

Court officials said Hamed Ahmidam had lived in the rural house outside Madrid where investigators believe the attackers prepared the explosives and stuffed them into backpacks before planting them on commuter trains.

Del Olmo released three other people after hours of questioning at the National Court.

Acebes said the investigation is still hunting the mastermind behind the attacks.

"It's possible that there will be more arrests in the next days," Acebes said.

He added that some of those charged are believed to have played a direct role in the March 11 bombings, which also injured more than 1,800 people.

Investigators have analyzed a videotape in which a man claiming to speak on behalf of al Qaeda said the group carried out the Madrid attack in reprisal for Spain's backing of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

In the immediate aftermath of the March 11 attacks, the government insisted that the armed Basque separatist group ETA was its prime suspect, even as evidence emerged of an Islamic link.

But in an interview published Monday in the newspaper ABC, Acebes said investigators had turned up no evidence of ETA involvement. "In the investigation, none," Acebes was quoted as saying.

According to the U.S. State Department, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group formed in the 1990s from fighters who had trained in camps in Afghanistan and has as its goals "establishing an Islamic state in Morocco and supporting al Qaeda's jihad against the West."