SPAIN: Spanish investigators began questioning five suspects in the Madrid train bombings yesterday and officials said four more had been arrested for the suspected al-Qaeda-linked attack that killed 202 people.
Fourteen men have now been detained. Several are Moroccans thought to have links with al-Qaeda.
Judge Juan del Olmo and a state prosecutor began questioning five suspects late yesterday afternoon, calling them in one by one.
At least three were Moroccans but Mr del Olmo started with a Spanish man suspected of helping the conspirators obtain the explosives used in the attack, which also injured more than 1,800 people.
It was still not clear yesterday whether the man, named as José Emilio Suarez Trashorras, had stolen the explosives for the bombers or whether he had simply shown a team of four Islamist militants how to set about it.
With the courts having imposed an official silence, the only information on the case came from police leaks to the Spanish media.
These alleged that Mr Suarez, who allegedly has a history of petty crime, made contact with the Islamists either in jail or during visits to Madrid, where he boasted about how easy it would be to steal dynamite from the quarry where he used to work.
The local El Comercio newspaper said yesterday that the police were aware more than two years ago of his alleged connections to a previous lot of stolen explosives.
The bombers reportedly told him they were looking for explosives for use in a Moroccan mine.
Court sources said yesterday that three more people had been arrested in Madrid's multi-racial district of Lavapies at the weekend while another was arrested in Getafe, a suburb of the capital. They were all believed to be Arabs.
It was the third batch of arrests - five suspects were picked up two days after the March 11th attacks and another five were rounded up last Thursday.