Four arrested in Spanish terror investigation

Police today arrested four people in Spanish cities as part of their investigation into radical Islamic cells in Spain, officials said.

The suspects, three Algerians and one Moroccan, were arrested in the northern cities of Victoria and Teruel and in Madrid, said a National police spokesman.

The Moroccan, identified as Khalid Zeimi Pardo, 27, is suspected of having links with Moroccan fugitive Amer el Azizi, who is wanted in connection with the Madrid terror bombing, the police spokesman added.

Authorities believe Azizi was a middleman between local Spanish cells of mainly North African immigrants and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terror network.

Seventeen people, most of them Moroccan, are jailed in Spain on provisional charges over the Madrid train bombings, which are blamed on Islamist militants with possible links to al-Qaida. The bombings killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800.

The arrests of the three Algerians are part of a police investigation into an Islamic cell that allegedly plotted to blow up the centre of Spain’s anti-terror investigations, the spokesman said.

Thirty-three people, Moroccans and Algerians, have been provisionally charged and jailed since late October over what authorities say was a plot to slam a truck loaded with 1,100lb of explosives into Madrid’s National Court.