More Arrests In Madrid Bombings

Spanish police have arrested four more suspects in the Madrid terror bombings, bringing the total in custody to 14, court officials said on Monday.

The arrests were made Sunday night or early Monday, the National Court officials said, refusing further details.

Three of the four suspects were arrested in the Madrid district Lavapies, a multiethnic neighborhood where top suspect Jamal Zougam ran a cell phone shop. The fourth suspect was picked up in Getafe, a suburb of Spain's capital, the officials said.

The arrests bring to 14 the number of people in custody on suspicion of having a role in the March 11 railway bombings, which killed 202 people and left more than 1,800 wounded.

Five suspects arrested last week — four Moroccans and a Spaniard — were to appear in the National Court Monday evening for questioning, court officials said.

Word of the arrests came as senior European intelligence officials gathered in the Spanish capital to discuss the Madrid bombings and address fears the Continent might become the next front in the war against terror.

The meeting of officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain was part of a flurry of European Union activity triggered by the rail attacks.

EU heads of state and government are to hold a special summit this week in Brussels to review a series of proposals including appointment of an anti-terrorism coordinator, establishment of a European terrorism database, mandatory national identity cards, and increased security at train stations, airports and other vulnerable targets.

The 10 bombs that ripped through the Madrid commuter rail network were Spain's worst terrorist attack ever and the deadliest in Europe since the Lockerbie airliner bombing of 1988, which killed 270 people.

Suspicion in Madrid has focused on an alleged Morocco-based terror cell suspected of links to al Qaeda and on al Qaeda itself.

Of the 10 suspects detained before Monday, a judge jailed three — all Moroccans — on charges of multiple counts of murder while the investigation continued. Among them was lead suspect Zougam of Morocco, who has been linked by court documents to members of an al Qaeda cell in Spain. Police have also traced a cell phone found attached to an unexploded bomb to the shop he ran in Lavapies. The bombs that ripped through the trains are believed to have used cell phones as detonators.

Two Indians were also jailed on charges of collaborating with a terrorist organization.

The five suspects being brought before the court Monday have not yet been charged. They were arrested Thursday and include Mohamed El Hadi Chedadi, the brother of Said Chedadi, an alleged al Qaeda operative arrested in 2001.

News reports say the Spanish detainee unwittingly led Moroccans who remain at large to an explosives warehouse at a mine in northern Spain to steal dynamite used in the Madrid attacks.

The meeting Monday comes as Spain's incoming Socialist government begins to pressure European allies and the United States for a new approach to fighting terrorism — based less on military force and police measures and more on rooting out social and economic inequities blamed for turning Muslim countries into breeding grounds for young men prone to terrorism.

"We have to defeat terrorists politically," the Socialists' foreign policy spokesman, Miguel Angel Moratinos, said in an interview published Monday by the newspaper El Mundo.

"We have to get Arab societies themselves to take measures to avoid proliferation of terrorists," Moratinos was quoted as saying.

He declined to go into detail about what proposals prime minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will make when he takes office in mid- to late April.

But Moratinos said Zapatero's ideas are much like those voiced by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who has called for a broad accord with the Arab world seeking to boost democracy and economic and cultural development as well as cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

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

The ruling Popular Party fell in a surprise defeat in general elections March 14 to Zapatero's Socialist party which, along with a majority of Spaniards, had opposed the Iraq war.

By Mar Roman