Spanish police stop Pakistani terrorist cell

Spain stops more plots by Islamic militants

MADRID One year after the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history, the Spanish police continue to uncover and thwart new plots involving Islamic militants, according to senior Spanish intelligence and law enforcement officials.
Despite sweeping measures to improve their ability to investigate potential terrorist threats since the March 11, 2004, bomb attacks that left 191 train victims and a policeman dead, the officials estimate that there are hundreds of people scattered in cells around the country committed to attacking centers of power in Spain.
The police have found indications of a cell of Pakistanis they suspect was planning an attack on a high-profile target in Barcelona.
The police also found evidence of a cell of North Africans in Madrid that apparently wanted to attack Madrid's high court, the officials said.
"We have been lucky that our investigations have managed to abort other plots before acts of terrorism took place," Juan Fernando López Aguilar, the justice minister, said in an interview. "That means the threats have not disappeared."
López Aguilar added that Spain had detained about 1,000 people suspected of being connected to the Madrid bombings and other potential terrorist activities in the past year. Most have been released.
Spain is still hunting for at least half a dozen suspects in the bombings, although they are probably outside the country.
"The great majority of the perpetrators are identified, dead or in prison," said a senior intelligence official at the Guardia Civil, a police force with military and civilian functions.
"But we cannot say that we have all of them," he said. "There are questions that remain unclear. The most important is: Who masterminded March 11?"
Of 79 suspects believed to be involved in the Madrid bombings, 24 are in jail and awaiting trial. Seven suspects blew themselves up in a Madrid apartment three weeks after the bombings to avoid capture.
The evidence of a Pakistani cell has emerged since the bombings.
Last September, the police arrested 10 Pakistanis suspected of belonging to a support network for Islamic militants. The raid turned up a video showing details of a number of buildings in Barcelona, including the 40-story Mapfre Tower and the 44-story Hotel Arts, the two buildings known as Spain's "twin towers."
The police also seized documents and videos calling for an Islamic holy war, several pounds of cocaine and more than $20,000 in cash.
The group apparently raised money through drug trafficking, falsifying documents and extortion, the intelligence officials said. They said they had evidence that the cell sent the money to cells in Pakistan that were loyal to Al Qaeda. But no evidence of any link to the March 11 attacks was found.
The senior intelligence official at the Civil Guard said the group was sending money to the same Islamic militants who killed the American journalist Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journal in 2002 in Pakistan.
Fernando Reinares, a special adviser to the Interior Ministry and a terrorism specialist with the Elcano Institute, said, "Apparently they were taking the first steps of what could be plans for committing terrorist actions."
Another cell was uncovered last autumn, when the police carried out an operation against a group of Algerian and Moroccan radicals who were believed to be planning an attack on Madrid's High Court and perhaps other targets.
Using informers, investigators learned that the plotters had started to try to procure explosives for the operation. There was no concrete information about the exact timing of the attack or the plan for carrying it out, Spanish officials said. But the government was concerned that the attack was imminent, so it decided to close down the cell.
Investigators brought the information to Judge Baltasar Garzón, Spain's highest antiterrorism magistrate, who ordered the arrests of more than 30 people, mostly North Africans, who were suspected of taking part in the plot.
"This particular plot was pretty close," said López Aguilar, the justice minister, in an interview. "But it didn't happen."
Investigators are trying to piece together whether there are connections between operatives of Al Qaeda in Spain and the Madrid bombings.
Evidence about the cells indicates that Spain is still a target for terrorist attacks despite the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq.
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