Italy, Belgium Seize Terror Suspects in Raids

By Emilio Parodi and Clara Ferreira-Marques

MILAN (Reuters) - Italy arrested an Egyptian man suspected of plotting the Madrid train bombings and Belgium held 15 for preparing a "terrorist attack" as police staged joint swoops on Islamic militants, officials said Tuesday.

Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, known as "Mohamed the Egyptian," was seized with a fellow suspect in Milan. Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the operation was aimed at a "dangerous group of terrorists close to al Qaeda" planning more strikes.

Belgian police, acting on information from Italy, arrested 15 people they said had been gearing up for an attack. Further raids took place in France and Spain.

Spanish and Italian authorities hailed Ahmed’s arrest as a major breakthrough in the investigation into the March bombings that blew up four commuter trains in the Spanish capital, killing 191 people.

"He is considered one of the masterminds of March 11," a Spanish Interior Ministry spokesman said.

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Italy’s Pisanu said the 32-year-old Egyptian was one of the "principal executors" of the bombings. Spanish prosecutors immediately requested his extradition.

Those arrested in Belgium included Jordanians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Moroccans. "We know them to be part of a terrorist group," said Glenn Audenaert, director of the federal police bureau of Brussels.

"About a fortnight ago, information came from the Italian authorities that people were becoming more active. We corroborated that intelligence and came to the conclusion that a group of people were preparing a terrorist attack," he said.

"Whether that attack should take place on our territory or in another country, we don’t know."

The European Union’s top counter-terrorism official told Reuters last week that all European countries were at risk of attack, regardless of whether they supported the Iraq war.

AHMED TRACED THROUGH PHONE CALLS

Spanish judicial source said Ahmed was a former Egyptian army explosives expert who gave courses at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

He was detained late Monday, hours after a Spanish judge issued a warrant for his arrest. The raid came after a three-month probe by intelligence and anti-terrorist units who traced him through phone calls, Italian officials said.

Investigating magistrate Maurizio Romanelli said the intercepted conversations contained "very significant references" to the Madrid attacks.

He said Ahmed was seized on the outskirts of Milan in one of six police raids in the city, along with an unidentified man who said he was a Palestinian. Prosecutors had feared they might be about to leave the country.

"They were highly mobile and we could not afford to wait," Romanelli told a news conference, adding that any attack would likely have been outside Italy. He said both Ahmed and the other man were accused of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act.

Wiretapped conversations between the two included the repeated phrase: "Let’s go, we are ready for martyrdom," an Italian investigative source said.

Spanish authorities have linked Ahmed to Serhane ben Abdelmajid Farkhet, best known as "The Tunisian," whom they consider the ringleader of the Madrid bombings.

Farkhet, 35, was killed on April 3 when he and six other major suspects blew themselves up in a suburban Madrid apartment rather than surrender to police who had surrounded them.

The dead militants "are my friends but I am sad because I cannot go to heaven with them," Ahmed said in one intercepted phone call, according to a Spanish police source.

Until the latest raids, 20 people had been formally accused of involvement in the Madrid bombings, of whom 14 are under arrest. At least 20 others have been arrested and cleared.

Investigators believe the bombs were the work of Islamic militants acting in the name of al Qaeda, which had not previously struck in any Western country since the attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.