BELGIUM/SPAIN: Belgian police have detained a suspect wanted in Morocco in connection with the 2003 bombings in Casablanca that killed 45 people, the federal prosecutor's office said yesterday.
Police detained the Moroccan man along with "fewer than 10" other suspects after conducting a series of morning raids at private homes in Brussels, Antwerp and Tongres, the office said.
"One of the people detained is ... the subject of an international warrant delivered by the Moroccan authorities following the attack in Casablanca," it said.
A series of suicide bombings in the Moroccan city last year killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers. Spanish investigators are looking into possible links between those bombings and last week's train attacks in Madrid.
Belgian police suspect the man and the other detainees had trained in paramilitary camps in Afghanistan and had links to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.
Known by its French acronym, GICM is listed by the United States as a "terrorist" group with the aim of establishing an Islamic state in Morocco and supporting al-Qaeda's fight against the west.
A spokeswoman declined to identify the suspect wanted by the Moroccan authorities, but said he was a Moroccan who was living illegally in Belgium.
The suspects might have links to another Moroccan arrested in the Netherlands, she said.
In Germany, an Algerian man suspected of heading a militant group recruiting suicide bombers for Iraq was extradited yesterday to Italy.
Mr Abderrazak Mahdjoub was detained in Hamburg in November at the request of Italian authorities. Four other North African suspects - three from Tunisia and one from Morocco - were arrested in northern Italy on the same day Mr Mahdjoub was detained. Another Tunisian with alleged links to the recruitment network was arrested in Milan in December. - (Reuters)