In The Days

• Source: New York Times
• Author: Victoria Burnett
• News Date: 1/21/08

They Want Spain Back.
ITD Editor

Distress of Nations

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

Ishmael

“And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”
—Genesis 16:12

MADRID — Intelligence agents on Sunday were sifting through evidence collected during a weekend crackdown on a group of suspected Islamic militants who the police say were plotting an attack on Barcelona.

The police arrested 14 men and raided several apartments, two mosques and a bakery in Barcelona, the capital of the northeastern region of Catalonia, a security official and local Muslim representatives said. The group included 12 Pakistanis, an Indian and a Bangladeshi, they said.

Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the Spanish interior minister, said Saturday that the detainees “belonged to a well-organized group that had gone a step beyond radicalization.”

They confiscated material for making bombs, including four timing devices, Mr. Rubalcaba said. Local news reports said the police had also taken phone records from the mosques and the bakery. Photographs of material found in the raids included the timing devices, a small bag of ball bearings, batteries and cables.

“When someone has timers in their home, you have no option but to think violent acts are being planned,” he said.

Spanish intelligence acted with the help of information from foreign intelligence agencies, Mr. Rubalcaba said, though he did not say from which countries.

Newspaper reports on Sunday said intelligence officials based in Pakistan had tipped off the Spanish authorities about a known Pakistani militant having left Pakistan for Barcelona to help put a terrorist plot in motion. Those reports could not be independently confirmed.

With a general election scheduled for March 9, the Spanish authorities are on the alert for terrorist attacks by Islamist groups or the Basque militant group ETA. An Islamist terrorist attack on Madrid commuter trains on March 11, 2004 — three days before the last general election — killed 191 people.

Since the Madrid bombings, the Spanish police have become very aggressive in their efforts to break up suspected Islamist plots. Groups of suspects are arrested fairly frequently, and often many are released within five days, which is the standard period that someone suspected of being a terrorist can be held without charge.

Muslim representatives based in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona said that around 3 a.m. the police raided the Torek Ben Ziad mosque, one of the city’s most prominent mosques, as well as a nearby Muslim prayer house. They also raided apartments in different parts of the city and searched a bakery in Raval late on Saturday.

One prominent Muslim representative in Barcelona, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter, said Sunday that several of those arrested belonged to Tabligh Jamaat, a group based in Pakistan. The group publicizes a benign type of revivalist Islam, but is suspected by Western intelligence agencies of being a recruiter for jihadists.

Those arrested included one of the imams of the Torek Ben Ziad mosque and a 70-year-old man, he said.

The Muslim representative said Tabligh was quite active in the Barcelona area of Raval. The group strongly proselytizes in the area and is secretive but not known among local Muslim organizations to be extremist, he said.