Court orders arrest of nine al-Qaida suspects

A court in central Turkey has ordered the arrest of nine Turks believed to have received training at al-Qaida camps abroad.

The nine were detained for questioning last week in central Konya province as part of probes into a string of suicide attacks in November in Istanbul that killed 62 people, including British consul general Roger Short, and an attack this month on a Masonic lodge also in Istanbul.

Authorities have blamed the November bombings of two synagogues, a British bank and the British Consulate in Istanbul on al Qaida but have said they were still investigating if the international terrorist network was involved in the lodge attack on March 9.

Prosecutors believe the nine were trained by al Qaida and the suspects confessed they had received military and other training in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bosnia, Anatolia said. A court in Konya ordered their formal arrest late yesterday, the agency reported.

Anatolia didn’t say what charges they faced or if the men were directly involved in the Istanbul attacks.

Officials could not be reached immediately for comment today.

The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi said it had received a statement from an al-Qaida-linked group, Jund al-Quds, or Soldiers of Jerusalem, claiming responsibility for the lodge attack. But authorities have been sceptical, saying the attack, which killed a waiter and one of two bombers, bore little resemblance to the four carefully planned suicide truck bombings last November.

Sixty-nine alleged al-Qaida militants will go on trial on May 31 for the November attacks. Fifty of the defendants are in jail, while the 19 others were released pending trial.