MADRID, 19 March 2004 — Spanish police have arrested five more people and conducted a series of raids in connection with the devastating train bombings that struck Madrid a week ago.
Sources at Spain’s Supreme Court said the detainees were four Arabs and a Spaniard. Three were arrested in Alcala de Henares, the suburb of Madrid where the bombs were thought to have been placed on packed commuter trains.
The fourth was detained in the northern city of Oviedo, the sources said. They had initially said he had been detained in Gijon.
They did not say where the fifth had been arrested.
The latest arrests bring to 10 the number of suspects detained over Spain’s worst ever terrorist attack, which killed 201 people and injured more than 1,500. Three Moroccans and two Indians have already been arrested and a judge in Spain’s highest criminal court was expected to decide today whether to charge or free them.
The suspects arrested in the past 24 hours must be charged or released before next Tuesday, sources said.
Police also launched several raids overnight on Wednesday as they stepped up their investigations into the deadly attack.
The latest arrests came as a statement attributed to Al-Qaeda called for a halt to attacks on civilians in Spain until the new Madrid government lays down its policy toward the Muslim world.
“We let the Spanish people choose between war and peace,” according to the statement received by the London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.
“They chose peace by electing the party which opposed the alliance with America in its war against Islam,” said the text signed by Abu-Hafs Al-Masri Al-Qaeda Brigades.
Meanwhile, a statement by a group calling itself “the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Arab Peninsula” vowed on Wednesday to avenge the killing of Khaled Ali Haj and said it would start targeting Saudi forces if they continued to hunt down Muslim fighters.
