A Spanish judge issued five international arrest warrants on Wednesday for suspects in the Madrid train bombings and re-arrested a Moroccan suspect, a court official said.
Judge Juan del Olmo was forwarding the warrants to authorities in Britain, Morocco and France, said the court official who did not want to be identified.
Among the five suspects sought is Abdelkrim Mejjati, a 36-year-old Moroccan who was convicted in absentia of the bombings in Casablanca last year and is no longer believed to be in Morocco.
Those bombings killed 33 people and 12 suicide bombers.
Spanish Interior Minister Angel Acebes on Tuesday identified the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group as the main focus of investigation in the March 11 bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1 800 others.
That extremist group is a forerunner of Salafia Jihadia, which Morocco blamed for the Casablanca bombings.
At least five members of the Combatant group, including alleged leaders Nouredine Nfia and Salahedine Benyaich, trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2001, Moroccan officials said.
Mejjati is also wanted by the FBI in connection with possible terrorist threats against the United States. A 2002 US State Department report on terrorism said the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group appeared to have emerged in the late 1990s. It interacts with other North African extremist groups, especially in Europe, the report said, adding that members traffic in falsified documents and are possibly involved in gunrunning.
The US ordered the group’s assets frozen in 2002.
The Spanish radio station Cadena Ser and the newspaper ABC have reported that Moroccan authorities believe Mejjati may have been the on-the-ground organiser of the Madrid attacks. Both outlets quoted Moroccan intelligence sources as saying Mejjati was in Madrid three days before the bombings.
Moroccan authorities have said it was unclear what role Mejjati played in the Madrid bombings.
Investigators have analysed a videotape in which a man claiming to speak on behalf of al-Qaeda said the group carried out the Madrid attacks in reprisal for Spain’s backing of the US-led war in Iraq.
The judge also had Moroccan Fouad Almorabit re-arrested on Wednesday.
Del Olmo interrogated Almorabit among a group of five suspects brought before the National Court on Monday night, and ordered him released early on Tuesday. The reason for the re-arrest was not immediately clear.
Spanish police have 19 people in custody including Almorabit — 12 Moroccans or Moroccan-born Spaniards, two Indians, two Spaniards and three Syrians.
Fourteen of the suspects have been charged with mass murder or collaborating with or belonging to a terrorist group.
The radio station Cadena Ser said one of the suspects who went before the judge told him the attack was motivated by the occupation of Iraq, for which Britain, Spain and the US were held responsible.
Besides Almorabit, four more suspects have yet to be brought before the judge. They are a Moroccan arrested on Friday, two Syrians arrested on Tuesday and Antonio Toro Castro, the brother-in-law of a Spaniard charged with supplying dynamite to the bombers. Court officials identified the Syrians as Walid Altaraki and Mohamad Badr Ddin Akkad.
The judge was expected to interrogate at least two of them on Wednesday.
Acebes, the interior minister, said on Tuesday that investigators were making swift progress. Although the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group is now the ”priority”, he said, ”other options are not being ruled out”, Acebes told reporters.
He said witness testimony and the discovery of a rural house where the attackers were believed to have assembled the backpack bombs used in the Madrid attacks have led investigators closer to unravelling the plot.
He said some of the chief perpetrators were among those in custody.
At least six witnesses, including some who were injured in the attack, identified Moroccan prime suspect Jamal Zougam and two other suspects in a lineup on Friday, Spanish media reports have said.
Witnesses said they saw Zougam leave a backpack before stepping off one of the four trains that were bombed, radio station Cadena Ser reported.
Zougam was arrested with his half-brother, Mohamed Chaoui, just two days after the attack. — Sapa-AP