MADRID, 11 January 2006 — Police arrested 20 people yesterday suspected of recruiting fighters and raising money for the Iraqi insurgency, the interior minister said.
Police broke up two well-organized and interconnected cells, one based in Madrid and the other in the Barcelona-area town of Vilanova i la Geltru, Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso told a news conference.
Police made 16 predawn arrests in Vilanova i la Geltru, three in Madrid and one in Lasarte in the Basque region.
The cell based in Vilanova i la Geltru may have been behind a suicide attack in November 2003 that killed 19 Italian military personnel and civilians in the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah, Alonso said.
He said the two cells had links to people in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
Fifteen of the detainees are Moroccan, three Spaniards, one is Turkish and another Algerian, Alonso said.
Last month Spanish authorities arrested 16 people suspected of recruiting people to stage attacks in Iraq, Chechnya and Kashmir.
