Role of possible Al Qaeda 'sleeper cell' probed in train blasts

MADRID -- Spanish and US counterterrorism officials said yesterday that investigators were zeroing in on what they fear is an Al Qaeda "sleeper cell" -- or possibly a freelance faction inspired by Al Qaeda -- that they believe was behind the train bombings that killed 200 people Thursday.

The cell seems to be made up largely of Moroccan immigrants who over the past two years took root in a crowded barrio in Madrid despite an intense, nationwide crackdown by Spanish authorities on Islamic militants that has put Spain at the cutting edge of the war on terror in Europe, said Gustavo Aristegui, a member of Spain's Parliament and one of the country's top terrorism analysts.

One of the three Moroccan immigrants arrested in the bombing case is named in a sweeping indictment of more than 35 alleged Al Qaeda operatives, including Osama bin Laden, which was handed down by Judge Baltasar Garzon of Spain.

Garzon, an investigating magistrate who heads Spain's counterterrorism effort, has said in court documents that he thinks Al Qaeda had sleeper cells in Spain possibly awaiting orders to attack.

One of those arrested Saturday, Jamal Zougram, was not specifically indicted by Garzon, but is named in the indictment in connection with Abu Dahdah, a jailed Islamic cleric who is the purported leader of Al Qaeda's Spanish cell.

El Pais, Spain's leading daily newspaper, quoted unnamed officials in the Interior Ministry as saying that all three Moroccan immigrants who were arrested -- Zougram, Mohammed Bekkali, and Mohammed Cahoui -- had ties to Dahdah.

US counterterrorism officials in Washington said they suspect the cell could be part of a wider, diffuse network of "freelance terrorists" that has mounted similar attacks in several countries in recent years in the name of, if not under the direction of, bin Laden.

"Some of them are taking up the good fight and using Al Qaeda as the umbrella," said a US counterterrorism official who asked not to be identified. "You chop off the head of Al Qaeda, and you get six more splinter tails that operate independently around the world."

CIA director George A. Tenet told Congress last week that a mounting extremist threat comes from individuals who have been infected by bin Laden's worldview and constitute a "movement" rather than a distinct organization operating on the orders from a definable hierarchy.

Some intelligence specialists fear the trend marks the coming-of-age of a large number of potential terrorists who fought in wars in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan and may have received training in explosives in bin Laden's Afghan camps.

A recent US intelligence report obtained by the Globe concluded that many of these individuals have scattered across the world to recruit foot soldiers and wage attacks while the US campaign targets better-known Al Qaeda leaders.

One theory that Spanish investigators are pursuing is an apparent link between the three Moroccans arrested Saturday and 16 Moroccans and other North Africans arrested in January 2003 over a foiled plot to build a crude chemical weapon, Aristegui said. Spanish authorities arrested the 16 men last year for alleged ties to the terrorist network led by bin Laden. Police said they seized explosives, chemicals, timers, and other bomb-making equipment, as well as false passports and other documents, from the men's homes.

But the case collapsed when a judge ruled that the chemicals -- many of them commonly available -- could not be established as illegal explosives. All the men were released.

"Police are looking into whether these guys who were arrested last year were involved" in the train bombings, said Aristegui, who served in several senior diplomatic posts in the Arab world and is the former chief of staff of the Interior Ministry.

Spanish authorities think the suspects released last year had possessed a mobile phone with a modification very similar to that of the mobile phone that investigators found inside an explosives-laden gym bag discovered amid the wreckage of one of the bombed trains, according to a high-level government source in counterterrorism.

In Lavapies, a crowded neighborhood of immigrants, the three arrested Moroccans were known to residents, and police officials said at least two of them worked at a mobile phone shop called Meditel.

Felix Cuesta, who owns a dried-fruit shop across the street from Meditel, said he knew Zougram and Bekkali. He said he had spoken with Bekkali on Saturday hours before he was arrested.

"We were talking about the bombings," Cuesta said, "and I asked him who he thought did it. He said it was probably that bastard Osama bin Laden."

Cuesta said Bekkali was in his mid-30s and was a good neighbor, and not someone who could be involved in terrorism.

The Lavapies area is notorious as an underground of drug dealing and trafficking in stolen mobile phones that are untraceable.

The three men are from northern Morocco, which has developed a reputation for yielding a strong and particularly virulent strain of Islamic militancy. The region is also known for harvesting marijuana for export to Europe.

Moroccan security specialists, who have spent nearly a year working with Spanish officials investigating terror bombings in Casablanca, arrived in Spain yesterday to help with the probe. Spanish citizens were among the 45 people killed last spring by suicide bombers in Casablanca in attacks on Jewish targets and a Spanish restaurant.

Those attacks were attributed to a shadowy Islamic militant group known as Salafia Jihadia, which Moroccan authorities contend is linked to Al Qaeda. In a crackdown on Islamic radical groups that followed, Moroccan authorities rounded up about 6,000 people and convicted 1,000.

The group is named for the Salafi school of Islam, which follows the teachings of a revered 13th-century imam. Critics say the Salafi school's interpretation of the Koran has been manipulated by Islamic extremists to justify attacks on civilians who are deemed "apostate."

Aristegui said he warned in a terrorism threat assessment 10 years ago of the dangers of a growing Salafi movement brought by immigrants from Morocco and Algeria. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States, Spain has pursued Islamic militants connected to this Salafi movement, intended to fracture the organizational structure that had taken root in Spain, Aristegui said.

Globe staff reporter Bryan Bender contributed to this report from Washington.