By Ciaran Giles
Associated Press
MADRID, Spain – Violent videos showing Taliban attacks in Afghanistan and a diary of a would-be suicide bomber were among the material confiscated when police arrested six Algerians suspected of forming a terrorist cell financed by Osama bin Laden.
The material, displayed for reporters Thursday by Madrid police chief Juan Cotino also included three sets of night vision glasses, forged identity papers and credit cards, a knife and a computer.
Cotino described the six as “sleeper activists,” and said that one of them wrote in the diary that he wished to be a suicide bomber.
The men were arrested in six different places in Spain on Wednesday and brought to Madrid following a request from a Belgian judge.
They have not been charged with anything and authorities have not linked them to the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.
But Cotino said the six had direct links with others arrested in Europe who were planning suicide attacks against U.S. targets on the continent.
He said the six are suspected of forming part of a group financed by bin Laden, who is believed to be behind the U.S. terror attacks. Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy said Wednesday that the men had been in contact with two other individuals detained elsewhere in Europe for allegedly planning suicide attacks against U.S. targets on the continent.
“It’s an important arrest and the United States embassy has already been informed. It marks … the collaboration against terrorism between all countries, particularly in this case between the countries of the European Union,” Rajoy said.
Meanwhile in London, Home Secretary David Blunkett told the British Broadcasting Corp. that as many as 11 of the 19 hijackers involved in the U.S. attacks may have been in Britain in the months leading up to the attacks.
“Some of them will have passed through, some will have stayed over,” he said. “What we do now know is, having identified these people – because we do actually now have the line back to where they were – we can track not only their movements, but those who associated with them. That is the crucial issue,” Blunkett said.
British police say they have received more than 100 requests from the FBI in the United States to trace suspects, witnesses and other people connected with the case.
Blunkett also admitted that it was possible that those who helped the hijackers could still be operating in Britain.
British anti-terrorist police continued to question six Iraqi men and one German man found hiding Wednesday in a truck parked outside a Royal Air Force base used by U.S. fighter jets.
Two other men arrested last week in connection with the terrorist attacks were still being interrogated and separately, police in central England were still holding three men detained Tuesday under the Terrorism Act linked to previous arrests in France and Belgium.
One of the men is a French national who was allegedly involved in a plot to attack U.S. interests in Europe. France has already placed seven other suspects in the case under formal investigation, a step before being charged.
French authorities said the eight are believed to have ties to bin Laden.
Those arrested in Spain were to obtain optical, electronic, computer and communications equipment and send it to colleagues in Algeria, according to Rajoy, the interior minister.
Rajoy said the six belonged to the Salafista Group for Preaching and Combat, believed to be a bin Laden-backed dissident faction of the Armed Islamic Group, Algeria’s most hardline insurgency movement.
The Algerians were “directly related” to Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian arrested in Belgium on Sept. 13, and Jerome Courtailler, a Frenchmen arrested in the Netherlands the same day, Rajoy said. Both belonged to a group planning suicide attacks against U.S. targets in Europe, Rajoy said without giving details.
Police had been on their trail for several months but lacked sufficient evidence to move in on them, Rajoy added.
All six men were in Spain legally, some for up to two years. People who had come to know them said they had never roused any suspicion.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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