Terror suspects ‘had video of Spain’s twin towers’

20 September 2004

MADRID – Ten Pakistanis arrested in Spain in possession of false documents and heroin also had a video showing details of two landmark buildings known as the country’s twin towers, it was reported Monday.

The Spanish daily La Vanguardia reported the hour-long video featured the 154-metre (506-foot) Mapfre Tower and nearby Hotel Arts in Barcelona.

A police spokesman in the region said he could neither confirm nor deny the report.

The Pakistani suspects were arrested by anti-terrorism police in Barcelona on Wednesday last week on suspicion of belonging to a “Islamic radical support network”.

A judge ordered them placed in preventive detention on charges of holding false passports, fake credit cards and an unspecified amount of heroin, but ruled that there was insufficient evidence to hold them as terrorist suspects.

The judge noted that documents seized at their homes in northern and central districts of Barcelona, including books linked to al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, were easily available in bookstores.

La Vanguardia also said that police who carried out the raids had found no evidence that the Pakistanis were planning to attack the Mapfre Tower and Hotel Arts, but added that the video could have been used as “basic information” for that purpose.

Commonly known as twin towers, the buildings are the same height and were the tallest in Spain when erected in 1992.

But they are not identical in appearance or structure, since the 40-storey tower is built of concrete while the 44-floor hotel has an all-steel structure.

Court sources said the arrest and detention of the Pakistanis was unconnected to the probe into the 11 March bomb attacks on commuter trains in Madrid, which killed 191 people and injured 1,900.
  
[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news