Madrid terrorists ‘planned Easter attack’

Mar Roman, Madrid

Police also fear last Saturday's suicide explosion that may have killed seven suspects, and the subsequent arrests of other suspects, could stir a "sleeper cell" to mount a holy war in Spain, said the official.

The latest detainees, both Moroccan men, were questioned in court yesterday in connection with the

March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800 others.

One was arrested in the town of Illescas near the Spanish capital on Tuesday, a court official said. That detention raised to 17 the number of people in custody. The suspect was not publicly identified.

The other, Fadual Aqili, was arrested on Friday at the border in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on Morocco's northern coast.

The court official said explosives and other evidence found in the apartment after Saturday's suicide blast indicated the suspects planned an imminent follow-up to the March 11 attacks.

The national celebrations end on April 11 on Easter Sunday.

The court official said police found a substantial quantity of money including a roll of 500 notes on the body of one of the suicide victims.

On Tuesday, prosecutor Olga Sanchez asked Juan Del Olmo, the investigating magistrate, to issue four more international arrest warrants. No information was available on those four suspects. Mr Del Olmo last week issued a similar warrant for six suspects.

The government previously said three of those six were among at least five suspected terrorists who blew themselves up as special forces prepared to storm their apartment in the Madrid suburb of Leganes. The court official said that police now believe that recovered body parts belonged to seven people.

Police are looking for possibly three people who may have fled the apartment before the suicide blast and are hiding out near Madrid, El Pais newspaper reported.

Authorities believe ringleader Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet of Tunisia and Moroccan Jamal Ahmidan described as his right-hand man and the person who rented the house where the bombs used in the March 11 attacks allegedly were assembled were among those killed in the suicide blast.

Police claim that as early as mid-2003, Fakhet was campaigning for a holy war in Spain.

The investigation into the Madrid attacks has focused on the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which has links to al-Qaida. It is also related to a group suspected in suicide bombings last year in Casablanca, Morocco, that killed 33 people.

Fearing more attacks, the government ordered unprecedented security measures this week when millions of Spaniard travel in large numbers for the Easter holidays.

A bomb was found and dismantled last Friday on a high-speed line between Madrid and Seville. A statement sent from a group linked to al-Qaida and which claimed responsibility for the March 11 attacks two days later said it was a warning of the havoc the group could wreak. The group said it would turn Spain into "an inferno" unless it withdrew troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.