Spanish police arrest terror suspects in raids

SPANISH police arrested 15 people yesterday on suspicion of recruiting volunteers for terror training in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Twelve people were arrested in Barcelona and in two other towns in the north-eastern region of Catalonia. Two suspects were arrested in the central town of Aranjuez, and one in the southern city of Malaga, a National Police spokesman said.

He said those arrested were Moroccan and that one was a minor.

Police said that the 15 faced charges of recruiting people to be sent for training as mujahedeen in camps in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The spokesman said the police operation is continuing and that there could be more arrests. “The arrests are further evidence that Spain is part of the battle field of international terrorism,” said Jesus Nunez Villaverde, an expert on the Islamic world and director of a Madrid think-tank, the Institute of Studies on Conflict and Humanitarian Action.

Since the September 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, Spanish police have arrested hundreds of Islamic terror suspects, many in connection with the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people.

Twenty-nine suspects, most of them Moroccan, are on trial in the Spanish capital for their alleged roles in the Madrid train attacks.

The attacks were claimed by Islamic radicals to avenge the presence of the country’s troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In recent years, security forces have focused on rounding up suspected militants for allegedly recruiting mujahedeen fighters and suicide bombers or for collecting money to finance al-Qaida and linked groups abroad.