BERLIN, 16 May 2004 — Five suspected members of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network arrested in Spain are associated with Abderrazak Mahjoub, an Algerian extradited from Germany to stand trial in Italy for recruiting suicide bombers, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported yesterday.
An advance copy of the weekly’s May 17 edition said Spanish police had picked up four Algerians and a Spaniard after investigating Mahjoub’s brother Farid, who lives in the country.
The arrests were made on Thursday in Madrid, in Spain’s second city, Barcelona, and in the northern Basque and Cantabrican regions.
Mahjoub was arrested in the northern German port city of Hamburg in November on a warrant issued by Italian authorities and extradited to Italy, where he went on trial in March.
He has been charged with recruiting suicide bomb volunteers for an organization headed by Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi, the man accused by US authorities of beheading the American businessman Nicholas Berg in Iraq.
Spanish police declined to say whether the five people arrested on Thursday were wanted in connection with the coordinated bombing of four suburban trains which killed 191 people in the capital on March 11.
So far, 13 people, most of them Moroccan, have been detained and provisionally charged with taking part in the attacks.
Seven other suspects blew themselves up to avoid capture and another seven are on the run.
