THREE SUSPECTED al-Qaeda members who were believed to be planning a terrorist attack in Europe have been arrested in Spain, the country’s interior ministry said yesterday.
Police detained two suspected al-Qaeda operatives who were travelling on a bus heading towards France from the province of Ciudad Real in central Spain on Wednesday. They were arrested after a brief struggle with police at a bus stop. The government could not confirm their nationality, although Spanish media reported that they were Chechen.
Another man, from Turkey, was arrested the same day in a house in the southern province of Cadiz. Described as a facilitator for al-Qaeda, he had enough explosives in his possession “to blow up a bus”, interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz said.
“There is clear evidence that the detainees could have been planning an attack in Spain and/or another European country,” the minister added. He insisted Spain did not face a greater threat from Islamist terrorism than other western countries.
The trio had been under surveillance for some time and the security forces decided to detain them when the two travelling by bus appeared to be leaving the country. One of that duo is an important figure in the al-Qaeda hierarchy, the minister said, adding that the detainee had experience as a sniper, in handling explosives and poisons and in piloting microlight aircraft.
“It is one of the most important operations against al-Qaeda to date to be carried out on an international level,” Mr Fernández said, highlighting the co-operation of other countries leading up to the arrests.
Several dozen suspected Islamic terrorists have been arrested in Spain since 2004, when 191 people died in Madrid after bombs planted by al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists exploded on commuter trains.
In March this year, a Saudi national dubbed “al-Qaeda’s librarian” was arrested in Valencia. He was suspected of being one of the organisation’s most active recruiters and indoctrinators.
In June, Spanish police arrested two men in the city of Melilla, a Spanish exclave in north Africa, whose terror cell was believed to have tortured and killed two other men as punishment for leaving the group.
In early July, Yemen-based group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula issued a communique in Spanish in which it called for “lone wolf” volunteers to join it, apparently as suicide killers. Targets cited in the message included economic centres, military objectives and media.
