Spain's National Court judge said on Tuesday the Moroccan
Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), which he described as "the main
agent of the Salafist Jihadist movement" in Spain, masterminded the
2004 Madrid train attacks.
In a 1,471-page detailed indictment released Tuesday,
investigative magistrate Juan del Olmo, who has spearheaded the
probe into the attacks against four commuter trains on March 11,
2004 which killed 191 and injured nearly 2,000 people, described
the creation and working of the cell.
Olomo said that he found out the existence of two large networks
during his investigation, all linked to the GICM, the first of
which had directly participated in the attack attempts, while the
second group facilitated the perpetrators' escape.
According to the judge's detailed indictment, terrorists with
the GICM received information of and access to classified documents
from an organization named the Global Islamic Media via the
Internet.
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In September 2003, they received a document from the Media calling
on them to act against Spain before the country's election and
press Spain to pull back troops from Iraq, taking advantage of the
consequences of the attacks.
Judge Juan del Olomo indicted 29 people Tuesday in connection
with the deaths of 191 people in the Madrid train bombings.
Three of the 29 indicted were charged with 191 counts of murder
and 1,755 counts of attempted murder. Three more were charged with
conspiracy to murder.
GICM leader Hassan al-Haski, one of the presumed ideologists and
planners of the attacks, was among the indicted.
The Madrid bombings were the deadliest terrorist attacks in
Western Europe and seen as having brought down a conservative
Spanish government that backed the war in Iraq.
Founded in the late 1990s, the GICM was listed by the United
States as a terrorist group which aimed to establish an Islamic
state in Morocco and to support al-Qaida's struggle against Western
countries.
The GICM has also been linked to the 2003 attacks in Casablanca,
which killed 45 people, among them 12 suicide bombers.
(Xinhua News Agency April 12, 2006)
