Sixth terrorist’s remains found

6 April 2004

MADRID – Forensic scientists analysing the remains of terrorists who blew themselves up said Tuesday they had found body parts of a sixth person.

Sources close to the investigation told EFE that scientists have examined remains strewn across a 60-metre radius around the flat in Leganés, a commuter town south-west of Madrid.

A group of terrorists blew themselves up Saturday night after being surrounded by anti-terrorist police.

Some of the bodies were completely destroyed but forensic investigators could identify the remains of others.

Police found the body parts of a fifth terrorist late Monday but were searching Tuesday to see if other Islamic terrorists had been in the flat at the time of the blast.

Sarhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, the alleged mastermind of the 11 March bombings, died in the blast.

Fakhet and Jamal Ahmidan, both named on international arrest warrants, were also killed along with Abdennabi Kounjaa, Asri Rifaat Anouar and another person, as yet unidentified.

Interior Minister Angel Acebes said their “collective suicide” meant “the core of the group that carried out the attacks is either arrested or dead”.

But rucksacks filled with explosives were found in the wreckage of the Madrid flat as well as 200 detonators of the kind used in the Madrid bombings, suggested the cell had been poised to strike again.

Three of the suspects from the international arrest warrant were thought to be still at large: Moroccan brothers Mohammed and Rachid Oulad Akcha and Moroccan Said Berraj.

Meanwhile, armed police were patrolling Madrid’s metro system Tuesday as Spain increased security after the terrorist attacks.

Fast-track check-in points at Madrid airport were closed and the army was guarding key road and rail links.

Police were still examining a fax which threatened to turn Spain ‘into an inferno’ if the country did not pull its troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
The fax, handwritten in Arabic, was sent to a newspaper by a group calling itself Abu Nayaf al-Afgani.

The group claimed responsibility for the 11 March attacks, which killed 191 people, and for Friday’s foiled bomb attack on the high-speed train link between Madrid and Seville.

The group said if its demands were not met, “we will declare war on you and turn your country into an inferno where blood will flow in rivers”.

A suspect arrested on Saturday in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, will appear Wednesday in court.

But a second man detained in Fuenlabrada, near Madrid, Saturday was released after being questioned briefly.

Spain has already provisionally charged 15 suspects over the Madrid train attacks.

The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group is the main focus of police investigations.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news