Suspected Madrid bombings mastermind questioned

A Spanish judge today was to question an alleged mastermind of the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people in Spain’s worst terrorist attack.

Egyptian Rabei Osman Ahmed, 27, was arrested in Milan in June, and was extradited from Italy last week after police allegedly overheard him boasting that he was the mastermind of the Madrid bombings and was planning another attack imminently.

After the questioning, National Court Judge Juan del Olmo will decide whether to file terrorism-related charges against him later in the day.

Del Olmo, who is leading the investigation into the attacks, said that while Osman Ahmed lived in Madrid, he “managed to take control of a small group of Arab followers, all of them with extremist Islamic ideology, supporters of jihad and Osama bin Laden”.

Spanish authorities say the Egyptian, considered an expert in explosives, was a key figure in the planning of the bombings and in the structure of al-Qaida in Europe.

Spanish investigators are especially eager to interrogate him because the other suspected ringleaders are dead – they were among seven suspects who blew themselves up on April 3 as special forces moved in to arrest them in an apartment outside Madrid.

Authorities say Osman Ahmed was a close associate of one of those seven, the alleged ideological mastermind of the attacks, a Tunisian named Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet.

In phone taps recorded before his arrest, Osman Ahmed reportedly said, “The Madrid attack is my project” and the March 11 attacks would teach a “lesson to Europe”.

Sixteen people have been jailed in Spain on provisional charges of mass murder or terrorism for the train bombings.

Osman Ahmed will be in Spain for six months for questioning. Spanish authorities say they must then return Osman Ahmed to Italy, where he is still under investigation for links to Muslim militant groups in Europe.