Barcelona terrorist suspects 'learning to build bombs'

Europe Features

Jan 20, 2008, 17:07 GMT

Madrid - Details emerged Sunday of raids in which Spanish police say they arrested 12 Pakistanis and two Indians who were 'learning to build bombs' when police burst into one apartment. The 12, detained in several Barcelona apartments in the early hours of Saturday, belonged to a terrorist cell planning an attack, an official was quoted by El Periodicio de Catalunya as saying. 'When police arrived, a group of them in one apartment were being taught how to build bombs,' the interior ministry official was quoted by the newspaper as saying. The raids were a chilling reminder to Spaniards that their country apparently remains the object of terrorist attack four years after the devastating bombings that left 191 people dead in Madrid. Since those attacks on four suburban trains, some 400 suspected Islamist terrorists have been detained in Spain amid repeated calls from al-Qaeda leaders to 'liberate from the infidels al Andus', as Spain was known during 800 years of Arab rule in the Middle Ages. Up to now the main terrorism threat has come from North Africa, where Islamist groups are believed to have gained an increasingly firm foothold in Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania. This time, however, the tip-off to secret service agents apparently came from Pakistan, from where a group of Islamists were reported to have arrived in Barcelona. 'If someone has fuse timers in his apartment, we have to assume he was planning violence of some sort,' Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said after Saturday's arrests. Press reports said those detained had arrived mostly from Morocco and Algeria. However, the fact that Pakistani nationals were apparently involved in planned violent acts was something new. Investigators were quoted in Spanish press reports as saying the development had to do with the Taliban making progress in Afghanistan. 'Afghanistan is back as the big centre for training al-Qaeda terrorists, as it had been before US-led troops moved in,' one investigator was quoted a saying by El Pais newspaper. More and more Pakistanis who live in Spain were going to Afghanistan for training, he added. Barcelona is home to some 15,000 Pakistanis - most of them in the Raval district close to the landmark Las Ramblas avenue which passes through the old town to the port. However, Pakistani community leaders have been quick to jump onto the defensive. 'I would be very surprised if these people had anything to do with terror,' said Pakistani Workers' Association President Javed Ilyas. 'They were in the act of praying when police burst in.' © 2008 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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JuliaJan 20th, 2008 - 21:20:44

Hello, Spain! How's that surrender (AKA 'paz') working out for you?

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I bet all these losers are on welfare!Jan 22nd, 2008 - 20:13:07

This is fact and it must stop.

Why do we feed people who are trying to exterminate us?

Throw out all muzzies to the ME.

We dont need them here wrecking and remaking our western world into their toilet homelands.

Muslims nations are the worst places to live and they are now pulling us down.

It needs to stop with real political leadership.

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NoharnessJan 23rd, 2008 - 00:46:36

This is not directly on topic, but important and there did not seem to be a better place to put it:

www.guardian.co.uk/nato/story/0,,2244782,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=network front

I'm not sure what these Generals are driving at here. The paper they wrote hasn't been put on line so far as I know.

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GooseJan 23rd, 2008 - 22:23:21

Hate to say it but the Spanish are getting what they deserve for their political submissions. Wonder how much more they will allow themselves to suffer before they start kicking the jawa's back to their sty's?

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