SPAIN: Spain says it has arrested a Moroccan man who police say helped three key suspects in the 2004 Madrid train bombings flee the country to go to Iraq where they may have joined insurgents.
The interior ministry yesterday named the man as Omar Nakhcha (23) and said he helped Mohamed Afalah, Mohamed Belhadj and Daouh Ouhnane escape from Spain after the Madrid train bombings on March 11th, 2004, which killed 191 people.
Mr Nakhcha, who authorities believe was in Belgium at the time, arranged for their passage to Iraq via Syria, the ministry said in a statement.
Spanish authorities believe Afalah died in a suicide attack in Iraq in May 2005. A government source said it was likely the other two also joined the insurgency against the Iraqi government and the US-led forces supporting it.
Mr Nakhcha's arrest and that of 20 people earlier this week point to growing evidence that Iraqi militants recruited fighters in European countries to join the insurgency in Iraq.
French officials said last year that at least five young men from a single Paris district had already died fighting in Iraq, one of them in a suicide attack.
A 38-year-old Belgian woman blew herself up near Baghdad in November in what was believed to be the first suicide attack in Iraq by a European woman.
Islamist militants claimed the March 11th attacks in the name of al-Qaeda, describing the bombings as revenge for Spain sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq when he took office a month after the Madrid bombings.
The interior ministry said Mr Nakhcha, who was arrested when walking down a street in the northeastern region of Catalonia, led two militant cells that sent fighters to Iraq.
Police on Tuesday arrested 15 Moroccans, three Spaniards, one Turk and an Algerian accused of being members of the cells.
Mr Nakhcha's most intriguing suspected link is to the March 11th bombings. The ministry said the three fugitives sought help from a network of cells, headed by Mr Nakhcha, which it said were allied to the al-Qaeda linked Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. He is suspected of helping the group to organise the travel of volunteer fighters between Iraq and Europe.
"He supplied the terrorists with false documentation, as well as those who returned to Europe to be integrated into Islamist cells after spending some time in Iraq," the ministry said.
Officials say Belhadj rented a Madrid apartment where seven prime suspects in the bombing blew themselves up in April 2004 as police closed in on them.
The Daouh Ouhnane suspected of being helped by Mr Nakhcha appears to be the same man - then named as Ouhnane Daoud - whom police identified in May 2004 as a suspect in the Madrid bombings after matching his fingerprints to those on a bag of detonators.
Spanish police have arrested more than 200 suspected Islamist militants since the 2004 bombings. - (Reuters)