Four held in hunt for Madrid bombers
Spanish police have arrested four more suspects, believed to be of Moroccan origin, in the hunt for the Madrid terror bombers.
Three were arrested in Alcala de Henares, a town outside Madrid where three of the four trains bombed in the March 11 attacks originated, said officials.
The fourth man was arrested in the north of Spain.
Alcala de Henares, 18 miles east of Madrid, is where police found a van with detonators and a cassette tape with verses from the Koran just hours after the bombings. A witness said he saw three men with their faces covered carrying backpacks toward the town’s station before the attack.
The four arrests take the total number of people in custody to 10. They include three Moroccans and two Indians arrested two days after the bombing, and an Algerian being quizzed to see whether he had advance knowledge of the attack.
Judge Juan del Olmo was to question the three Moroccans and two Indians today to determine whether they should be freed or jailed for further investigation.
Those five have been held under anti-terrorism statutes that allow police to detain suspects for interrogation for up to five days before presenting them to a judge.
Authorities had said as recently as Tuesday that the attack death toll had risen to 201. But on Thursday, the Madrid regional government said only 194 bodies have been identified and that the definitive toll would not be known before next week.
The key suspect is Moroccan Jamal Zougam, 30. Spanish police were reported to have been seeking another 20 people – nearly all Moroccan – for questioning.
Spanish law enforcement agencies had been aware of Zougam’s links to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network since at least 2001, when they searched his Madrid apartment. They found videos, including one that contained a bin Laden interview, and phone numbers for suspected al-Qaida members.
