Madrid - Morocco, home to most of the suspects in the Madrid train bombings, has warned Spain it has lost track of about 400 suspected Islamic terrorists, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Moroccan authorities alerted Spanish anti-terrorism judge Baltasar Garzon during a meeting in Rabat, Morocco, in early July that some 600 Moroccans Muslims were known to have trained in Afghanistan in camps sponsored by Osama bin Laden, the daily El Pais said, quoting unidentified sources close to police and judicial officials.
But Morocco only had tabs on 200 of them. The whereabouts of the 400 others are unknown, El Pais said.
Spanish officials refused to comment on the report, but the newspaper story backs up statements Garzon made earlier this month to a Spanish parliamentary commission investigating the Madrid bombings.
He told the commission that Morocco was teeming with some 100 al-Qaida-linked cells capable of staging suicide attacks in Europe.
More than 50 people, mostly Moroccans, have been arrested and 16 remain in jail in connection with the train bombings that killed 191 people and injured some 2 000.
Garzon told the commission that many of the cells are in northern Morocco and contain members who speak perfect Spanish, allowing them to slip easily in and out of Spain _ just a short ferry ride across the Strait of Gibraltar.
He also said the groups raise money by dealing hashish, selling stolen cars and smuggling people into Spain.
El Pais reported on Sunday that Moroccan officials and Garzon also discussed greater anti-terrorism co-operation between Spain and Morocco and among North African countries, like Algeria, and European countries, like France and Italy.
Edited by Wilmer Muller
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1562885,00.html
Saudi Arabian security officials have intensified the hunt for al-Qaeda's chief operative in the kingdom after he evaded a police dragnet on Friday, hours after an amnesty for militants expired.
Saleh al-Awfi, a former prison guard who has led al-Qaeda's operations in the kingdom since its veteran chief Abdel-Aziz al-Muqrin was killed on June 20, is said by security officials to be in the capital, Riyadh.
excerpted
....some 600 Moroccans Muslims were known to have trained in Afghanistan in camps sponsored by Osama bin Laden,
HEY, I HAVE AN IDEA... WE SHOULD GRANT THEM PERMANENT RESIDENT VISAS:
Congress is allowing this. I call it treason.
State Department Announces 2005 Diversity Visa Lottery
Results
United States Department of State (Washington, DC)
July 22, 2004
Posted to the web July 22, 2004
Washington, DC
Diversity Visa Lottery 2005 (DV-2005) Results
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1177820/posts
*50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.....
EGYPT 6,070
MOROCCO 5,298
The only shame here is that the "missing" terrorists in Morroco are not missing in the way my imagination would have them gone.