Spanish police have identified six Moroccans who they suspect carried out last week’s bomb attacks in Madrid, it was reported on Tuesday.
According to unnamed sources cited by Spain’s El Pais newspaper, five of the men are on the run but one — Jamal Zougam — was among a group of suspects arrested on Saturday.
Spanish authorities believe the terrorists behind the March 11 attack have ties to a radical Islamist group that killed more than 40 people in suicide bombings in Casablanca last May, according to the paper.
It says police see Zougam as a ”prime suspect” who is believed to have helped construct the explosive devices used in the Madrid bombings, which killed 201 rush-hour commuters and injured an estimated 1 500 more.
Citing security sources, the paper said Zougam, who was arrested last Saturday along with two other Moroccans, had been identified by two survivors of the train blasts who said they saw him before the explosions.
No formal charges have been made against him or the other two Moroccans in custody. The men are being held under anti-terror laws that allow police to question them for up to five days without charge.
Two Indian men who were also arrested on Saturday have been released following police interrogation, El Pais reported. The paper said the men are understood to have sold the mobile phones that were used by the attackers to remotely detonate the bombs.
Investigators also believe that a video tape in which an unidentified man with a Moroccan accent claims responsibility for the bombings in al-Qaeda’s name is authentic, according to radio station Cadena Ser.
Spain’s interior ministry has so far declined to comment on Tuesday’s reports in the Spanish media.
Moroccan officials previously dismissed the possibility of a direct link between the Casablanca bombing and the attack on Madrid.
Reporting on the progress of the investigation into the bombings, the Spanish Interior Minister, Angel Acebes, said on Monday that autopsies on victims of the blasts had found no evidence that suicide bombers were involved.
He also warned the Spanish public and the wider international community, which is desperate for confirmation of who was behind the attack, that the investigation would be ”a long and complex” one.
The bombings, which authorities initially blamed on armed Basque separatists Eta, sparked widespread anger at Prime Minister José MarÃÂa Aznar’s support for the US-led Iraq war.
Spain’s Prime Minister elect, José Luis RodrÃÂguez Zapatero, said, following his shock win, that he would pull Madrid’s troops out of a ”disastrous” occupation of Iraq unless the United Nations takes charge in the summer.
The suspicions of many Spaniards that the ruling centre right Popular party was not revealing all it knew about the bombings helped sweep the government out of office.
Some analysts have suggested that, if al-Qaeda or an associated group was proved to be behind the attack, it would be first time Islamist militants have successfully influenced the political course of a major western democracy through violence.
However, Zapatero denied at a news conference on Monday that his success was a ”victory for terrorism”. He said: ”In Spain, there was a desire for change.” – Guardian Unlimited Â