Tunisian suspected in Madrid blasts
MADRID -- A 35-year-old Tunisian is believed to have led the group suspected in the railway bombings in Madrid, according to the international warrant for his arrest released yesterday.
Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet is one of six people sought in warrants that a Spanish judge issued Wednesday but made public a day later. Fakhet allegedly helped arrange the rental of the house outside Madrid where investigators say the bombs were assembled for the March 11 attacks.
Four of the others had been at the house, said warrants issued by Judge Juan del Olmo. The warrant describes Fakhet as "leader and coordinator of the people allegedly implicated." It does not suggest he was overall organizer of the attacks, which killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800.
Investigators in Spain and elsewhere have named several people as the possible masterminds of the bombings. Earlier this week, the government identified the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group as the main focus of the probe. It was the forerunner of Salafia Jihadia, which Morocco blamed for bombings in Casablanca.
Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan already jailed and charged with mass murder in the case, also is considered a prime suspect. Police traced a cellphone found attached to an unexploded bomb to the shop he ran in Madrid. Zougam has been linked to members of an Al Qaeda cell in Spain.
The names of two people, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abdelkrim Mejjati, have surfaced in the past two weeks as possible top organizers of Spain's worst terrorist attack. Neither was among those named in the new arrest warrants.
Investigator Jean-Charles Brisard of France said last week that Spanish officials saw Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked to Al Qaeda, as the brains behind the bombings.
Spanish media have quoted Moroccan intelligence sources as saying Mejjati, a Moroccan, was the on-the-ground organizer and had been in Madrid three days before the attacks. But Moroccan authorities reported it was not clear what role he had played.
Police say they believe some of the lead terrorists are among the 19 people in custody. Fourteen have been charged, six of them with mass murder.
Fakhet's arrest warrant said he had been an active campaigner for jihad, or holy war, among some of the suspects in custody. As early as mid-2003, he showed signs of preparing a violent act in Spain, specifically the Madrid area, "as a demonstration of the said jihad," his warrant said.
Brisard, an internationally known authority on counterterrorism, said yesterday he had not previously heard of Fakhet. The five others named in the warrants were Moroccans Jamal Ahmidan; Said Berraj; Abdennabi Kounjaa; Mohammed Oulad Akcha, and his brother Rachid Oulad Akcha.
