Police have arrested three suspected members of al-Qaeda who had amassed explosives and may have been plotting attacks in Spain or elsewhere in Europe, Spain’s interior minister said on Thursday. Two of them had practiced flying light aircraft.
The three — a Russian, a Russian of Chechen descent and a Turk, according to Spanish police — were detained on Wednesday. The Turk was arrested in La Linea, bordering the British colony of Gibraltar, while the other two were picked up near Ciudad Real as they traveled toward a northern Spanish town near the border with France.
Enough explosive material was found in the house in La Linea where the Turk lived to blow up a bus, and the material could be especially dangerous if combined with shrapnel, Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said.
Investigators found no indications that the three were targeting Gibraltar, he said, declining to offer specifics on possible targets, except that “there are clear indications they could have been planning an attack in Spain and/or another country.”
“This is one of the most important operations carried out against al-Qaeda,” Fernandez Diaz told reporters.
He said the operation involved close collaboration with intelligence services from “Spain’s allies,” without identifying any of the countries.
The arrests came as the Summer Olympics were being held in Britain under tight security against possible terrorist attacks, including military aircraft and ground-to-air missiles. Spanish authorities had been watching the suspects for “some time,” the minister said and decided to arrest them after the Russian and the Russian of Chechen descent took a bus toward France. The two arrested in the bus were traveling from Cadiz to Irun, possibly intending to cross into France, the minister said. The pair had been in Spain for about two months. Cadiz is near the large US military base in Rota alongside the Mediterranean.
“Police moved to arrest them when it became known that they planned to leave Spain,” he said.
Fernandez Diaz did not disclose the suspects’ names, but said two were suspected al-Qaeda operatives, while the Turk was a facilitator. Pictures of the suspects were released by Spanish authorities, but they were identified only by their initials: C.Y. for the Turk and A.A.A. and M.A. for the other two.
The mug shots showed three men who appeared to be in their 30s, two with crew cuts and one with hair down to his shoulders.
The minister described one operative as a key member of the terror network, and said both operatives had practiced flying in light aircraft, without saying where or whether authorities suspect they might have been plotting an attack using aircraft. One was also an expert in explosives and poisonous substances, Fernandez Diaz said.
Spanish police have arrested dozens of al-Qaeda suspects since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US, and more after the 2004 train bombings in Madrid.
Most Islamic-based terror arrests in Spain over the past several years have been of lower-level players and people trying to recruit jihadists, but the detention of the Russians and the Turk was significant because of their apparent high level of training and capability, said Magnus Ranstorp, a terror expert at the Swedish National Defense College.
“What jumps out is that they have had aircraft training,” he said. “It’s always a worry that someone could get a hold of a private plane and try to do a [terror] operation against an event,” Ranstorp said.
However, getting to Britain during the Olympics probably would have been a challenge for the three, even if they had not been under surveillance.
Passport-free ground travel in much of the 27-nation EU meant they could have gone to countries on the continent without facing document checks, but getting to Britain is more difficult because passport checks for visitors are mandatory.
Britain “has the tougher border control. They are almost like the United States in some sense. They triple-check your name in databases,” Ranstorp said.
The three will appear soon before an investigating magistrate at the National Court in Madrid and remain under detention while a judge studies the case and decides on possible charges. That process could take anywhere from days to months, and authorities are not likely to release more details about the case until the judge finishes that work.
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