Spain Tries 11 Over Alleged Islamic Terror Plot

Three men of Pakistani origin denied any wrongdoing Thursday as they went on trial over an alleged plot to stage homicide attacks in Barcelona on orders from the Pakistan Taliban.

Police foiled the alleged plan with a series of raids in January 2008 in Spain's second-largest city, after a member of the cell designated to blow himself up got cold feet and alerted authorities, a Spanish prosecutor said.

The 11 men on trial include nine men of Pakistani nationality or origin and two from India. They have all pleaded innocent.

Malik Qadeer, 33, accused of belonging to a part of the cell tasked with making bombs for the attacks, said he is a butane gas delivery man who knows nothing about electronics or chemicals.

"I don't even know how to connect two cables," he told the National Court. Qadeer said he had never even heard the word Taliban until he moved to Spain in 2001, and said he knew nothing of any plot to bomb the metro in Barcelona. "Not even a beast would do that," he said.

His 28-year-old roommate, Shaib Iqbal, also denied any knowledge of the alleged plot.

One of the plan's alleged ringleaders, 40-year-old imam Maroof Ahmed Mirza, refused to testify. Another accused leader, Mohammad Ayud Elahi Bibi, 65, said he practiced a peaceful version of Islam.

After Thursday's session, the trial was scheduled to resume Monday.

When the plot was made public last year, it gave Spaniards a chilling reminder of the Madrid terror bombings of March 2004: packed commuter trains ripped apart by 10 backpack bombs that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800.

At the time, a general election was three days away, and Islamic militants who claimed responsibility for the Madrid massacre said it was revenge for the presence of Spanish peacekeepers in Iraq.

In 2008, public transport was allegedly targeted again, a general election was just two months away and the attack was allegedly planned because Spain has troops in Afghanistan, prosecutor Vicente Gonzalez Mota has said.

But there have been doubts as to how close the Barcelona cell actually was to staging what would have been Spain's first suicide terrorist attack.

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Source:FoxNews

Why Al Qaeda Wants a Safe Haven

BY JIM ARKEDIS

Take it from someone who has spent the last half-decade studying terrorist plots: A homeless al Qaeda is the best guarantee against large-scale attacks.

As deliberations about the Obama administration's strategic direction in Afghanistan unfold, the White House is weighing whether al Qaeda, in fact, needs an Afghan safe haven -- an expanse of land under the protection of the Taliban -- to reconstitute its capability to attack the United States.

Many noted scholars doubt it. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass bluntly stated, "Al Qaeda does not require Afghan real estate to constitute a regional or global threat."

He's wrong. Although the group has been significantly weakened since late 2001, the only chance al Qaeda has of rebuilding its capability to conduct a large-scale terrorist operation against the United States is under the Taliban's umbrella of protection.

Objections like Haass's are rooted in the following arguments: that terrorists don't need physical space because they can plot online; that the London and Madrid bombings prove deadly attacks can be planned in restrictive, Western, urban locations under the noses of local security services; and that denying terrorists one safe haven will simply compel them to move to another lawless region.

I spent five years as a counterterrorism analyst for the Pentagon and rigorously studied plots from Madrid to London to 9/11. The above arguments may have merit in a piecemeal or abstract sense, but fall apart in the specific case of what we all dread: a large-scale, al Qaeda operation aimed at the United States.

It is certainly true, for example, that terrorist groups can accomplish much online. Individuals can maintain contact with groups via chat rooms, money can be transferred over the Web (if done with extreme caution), and plotters can download items like instruction manuals for bomb-making, photographs of potential targets, and even blueprints for particular buildings.

But all the e-mail accounts, chat rooms, and social media available will never account for the human touch. There is simply no substitute for the trust and confidence built by physically meeting, jointly conceiving, and then training together for a large-scale, complex operation on the other side of the world.

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Source: Foreign Policy

Madrid bombers get long sentences

Source: BBC

A Spanish court has sentenced three men to thousands of years in jail for their part in the Madrid bombings in 2004.

Moroccans Jamal Zougam and Otman el Ghanoui and Spaniard Emilio Trashorras were convicted of murder, but suspected mastermind Rabei Osman was acquitted.

Twenty-one - out of 28 on trial - were convicted and seven acquitted over the blasts on four trains that killed 191 and injured more than 1,800.

Victims' families said the accused had got off lightly.

All had pleaded not guilty to involvement in the Islamist attacks during the four-month trial.