Gas attack suspect is papal worker

A CHEMISTRY student working as a volunteer to prepare for a visit by the Pope to Madrid has been arrested on suspicion of planning a gas attack targeting anti-papal protesters.

Pope Benedict XVI is due in Spain today to celebrate World Youth Day, and an evening protest march had been scheduled.

Suspect Jose Perez Bautista, a 24-year-old Mexican studying organic chemistry, was arrested in a convention centre where visitors for the papal rally were to pick up their accreditation.

An official with the visit’s organising committee said the Mexican was a volunteer. A total of 30,000 people are taking part in the organising effort, 10,000 police are providing security in Madrid and organisers say they expect more than one million young pilgrims for World Youth Day.

Police said Bautista had been making threats over the internet against people in Spain opposed to the papal visit, and police who’d been monitoring his online activity ultimately decided to arrest him.

Police said officers who searched Bautista’s apartment seized an external hard-drive and two notebooks with chemical equations unrelated to his studies. He is believed to have been concocting suffocating gases, though police did not reveal if they had confiscated any chemicals.