Al-Qaeda tape warns Spain will be targeted over troops

AN AL-QAEDA videotape threatening more terrorist attacks against Spain singles out the incoming Socialist government for its decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.

The Spanish interior ministry said that the video was found in the rubble of a Madrid suburb apartment where seven suspects in the bombings blew themselves up on 3 April.

The Arabic-language tape was badly damaged in the explosion, and two sentences that police originally called unintelligible were finally translated and released by the ministry.

In the video, three of the suicide terrorists claimed responsibility for the 11 March attacks in the name of a group linked to al-Qaeda and threatened more bloodshed unless Spain withdraws its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan in a week. The government said the tape was recorded on 27 March.

The men on the tape said they spoke in the name of "the Al Mufti Brigades and Ansar al-Qaeda".

One of the sentences alludes to Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, due to take over as prime minister on Friday. His party won the election overshadowed by the bombings, which killed 191 and wounded more than 1,800.

"Your new ruler has begun his mandate with more fighting against Muslims and sending more crusade troops to Afghanistan," according to the ministry’s text.

In another sentence, the man seen reading on the tape says: "We will treat you brutally. We will kill you. We will bring war to your homes, and you will not be able to sleep at night."

The future defence minister, Jose Bono, has said Spain will double its troop contingent in Afghanistan to 250 in August.

The decision was interpreted as an attempt to offset criticism of the Socialist government for its plans to withdraw the 1,300 Spanish troops stationed in Iraq unless the United Nations takes charge there.

News of the tape came after the arrest of three more suspects for the Madrid bombings, taking the number in custody to 24. Court officials identified two Moroccans arrested in the Costa del Sol city of Malaga as Abdelghafour Abderrazzak and Mohamed El Barrouchi. The interior ministry said a third North African had also been arrested in Malaga.

Eighteen people, 14 of them Moroccan, have been charged in connection with the bombings. Six have been charged with mass murder.

The government says the focus of its inquiry is the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, an al-Qaeda-linked group that is also related to an organisation blamed for last year’s suicide bombings in Casablanca which left 45 people dead including 12 attackers.

Spanish authorities say the core members of the Madrid bombing cell have either been jailed or were among the suspected terrorists who blew themselves up. But at least six more are being sought.

US intelligence agents yesterday spent a second day questioning al-Qaeda suspects arrested in Spain about a possible link to the 11 September attacks, court officials said.