January 6, 2005 Spain Arrested More Than 130 Suspects in Islamic Terrorism in '04 By RENWICK McLEAN ADRID, Jan. 5 - Spain said Wednesday that it arrested more than 130 people last year suspected of involvement with Islamic terrorism, nearly half of them in connection with the March 11 train attacks in Madrid. José Antonio Alonso, the interior minister, said the police had made 62 arrests in the investigation of the train bombings, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,000. Speaking at a midday news conference here, he said the arrests "have allowed us to advance the investigations and to unravel a good part of the plot that led to the March 11 massacre." Although Spanish investigators say they have largely broken up the group that carried out the train bombings, they say they remain concerned that other cells are still active in Spain and are planning violence. More than 40 of the terrorism suspects described by Mr. Alonso on Wednesday are accused of planning attacks unrelated to the March 11 bombings. The bulk of these arrests occurred in October, when Spanish police disrupted a plot they said had intended to bomb several Madrid landmarks and government buildings, and a professional soccer stadium that can hold more than 70,000 people. Wednesday's tally also suggests that many Islamic radicals have chosen Spain as their entry point to Europe, government officials said. For years, "Spain was especially accessible," Fernando Reinares, the senior antiterrorism adviser at the Interior Ministry, said in an interview before the news conference. "Spain's borders were very porous, more so than those of other European countries." The current government, led by the Socialist Party's José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, says that it has stepped up efforts to closely monitor Spanish borders since winning power in March. Spanish investigators say some of the men arrested in the March 11 attacks have ties to terrorist activities outside Spain. The most recent example is Hassan el Haski, who was detained in December in the Canary Islands. Police investigators here say that he was the leader in Europe of the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group, an organization suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda and accused of carrying out terrorist attacks in Casablanca in May 2003 that killed 45 people. At the news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Alonso did not say how many of the people arrested last year remain in Spanish custody. An unofficial count of those jailed in the March 11 attacks alone put the number at 18. One person has been tried in the train attacks, a minor who has been identified only by his initials, G. M. V. He pleaded guilty in November to transporting and supplying explosive materials used in the attacks. It is not clear when the other suspects will go on trial, but the judge investigating the attacks, Juan del Olmo, has said he would like to finish his work by the anniversary of the bombings. A separate investigation of Al Qaeda's presence in Spain, led by a High Court judge, Baltasar Garzón, was wrapped up in June after the indictment of more than 40 people. Trials stemming from his investigation are expected to start this spring. With that investigation out of the way, Mr. Garzón plans to take a leave of absence beginning in March to teach at New York University. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/international/europe/06spain.html?pagewant ed=print&position= ------------------------ Yahoo! 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