Spain Arrests Eight Over Plot to Bomb Court

A terrorist attack believed to be aimed at the national court in Madrid seems to have been foiled by the arrest in the past two days of eight alleged radical Islamists.

Phone taps had revealed that the men, mainly of north African origin, were part of an alleged plot to explode a lorry filled with half a tonne of explosives, the Spanish media reported.

The supposed target is where terrorism cases are investigated and tried.

"This is an operation against Islamist radicals," the interior minister, José Antonio Alonso, said. "They were talking about an attack on the national court or another judicial body but police are not ruling out other possible targets."

A "martyrs' manual" was seized in the raids in Madrid, Valencia, Almería, Málaga and Pamplona on the homes of at least four Algerians, a Moroccan and a Spaniard from the north African enclave of Ceuta.

Last night it was reported that the police were also questioning a number of people already in jail who were said to be involved in the plot.

The daily ABC said the investigators had not found evidence of direct contacts between those arrested and any those suspected of the Madrid train bombings on March 11 which killed 191 people.

The presumed leader of the eight is reported to be an Algerian said to use the names Mohamed Achraf and Mikael Etienne Christian, who was arrested in Swizerland recently at Spain's request.

He is alleged to have links with the Algerian Armed Islamic Group.

The arrests were at the behest of the national court judge Baltasar Garzón, who is investigating a network of violent Islamists allegedly operating in Spain.

The police, who were reported to have been told of the group's plans by a Moroccan imam living in Madrid, said the eight were in contact with other radicals in Europe, the US and Australia.

The imam is said to have warned the police in advance about the group that carried out the March 11 attack. On that occasion the police failed to act in time.

Since September last year Judge Garzón has indicted 41 people on terrorism charges, including Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida suspects accused of the September 11 2001 attacks in the US

Another national court judge, Juan del Olmo, is leading the investigation of the March 11 incident, which has been blamed on Muslim militants with links to al-Qaida.

The newspaper el Mundo reported that the police had asked for Islamist prisoners to be kept apart from members of the Basque terrorist group Eta, which has a stock of explosives. The March 11 bombers bought their explosives from a network which trafficked in explosives stolen from quarries.