Posted on 08/17/2005 8:58:23 AM PDT by Vestica
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A Madrid train bombing suspect wanted on an international warrant since last year has been arrested in Serbia where he was carrying forged Iraqi documents, Spain's Interior Ministry said Wednesday.
The suspect, Moroccan-born Abdelmajid Bouchar, 22, fled from a Madrid suburban apartment three weeks after the March 11, 2004 train bombings, as police closed in to make arrests there. Seven train bombing suspects blew themselves up during the raid.
An international warrant was issued for Bouchar but the trail ran cold until his recent arrest in Belgrade for violating Serbian immigration regulations, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Bouchar was carrying forged Iraqi documentation using the name Midhat Salah and refused to cooperate with Serbian authorities, who sent his fingerprints to the international police agency, Interpol. Spanish police were subsequently able to determine his real identity.
Spain will seek his extradition.
The coordinated bombings against four rush-hour morning commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500.
A total of 109 people, many of them Moroccan-born, have been charged in the case, and about 20 remain in jail, a National Court spokeswoman told CNN. Indictments are expected possibly next month and a trial would follow.
Bouchar reportedly had been on the street as police closed in on the suspected train bomber hideout in the Madrid suburb of Leganes on April 3, 2004. Bouchar detected their presence, shouted up to the other suspects in the apartment and took off running.
A gun battle ensued between the suspects inside the apartment and police on the street, before special operations officers closed in hours later after a siege.
As they did, the seven suspects, including several prime suspects in the train bombings, blew themselves up, also killing one of the special operations police officers.
(Excerpt) Read more at search.netscape.com ...
Send him back to Spain so thatb they can slap his wrist.
Iraq not connected to Al Quaeda? Say it ain't so...
A good protestant, I guess.
Why are the Libs even printing this? He's a hero in Spain.
Curious, isn't it. Spanish authorities also have in custody AQ members who confessed to providing Atta with fake docs to visit Prague in the summer of 2001? Faked, or did some Iraqi intel forces remove Iraqi passports and other official docs and share them with AQ?
"Bouchar was carrying forged Iraqi documentation using the name Midhat Salah and refused to cooperate with Serbian authorities, who sent his fingerprints to the international police agency, Interpol."
And how many "terrorists", over the last decade, had meetings with Iraqi intel, or with Sadaam, or traveled through Bahgdad, or stayed in Baghdad, or traveled on "forged" Iraqi documents? And, for how long has this "Morrocan" had his Iraqi documents?
And when did Al Queda's Zarqawi actually begin his network of associations in Iraq, with Sadaam's support, and why? You think it was only since we invaded Afghanistan?
And Iraq and the war on terror are not related and never were???
My question is, why or why was he in Serbia?
How much you wanna bet he was trying to lie low in Kosovo?
Not a good bet for you, dirtboy - Kosovo has the intelligence agencies of each and every nation which has a military presence there, as does Bosnia.
Serbia, on the other hand, hasn't been noted as of late for it's cooperation with international law enforcement efforts, and so may have seemed a relatively safe place for an international fugitive.
Some reports have him living in Belgrade, under his pseudonym, but the actual details of his run from the Law are still to be established.
And those nations can't even deal with the drug and sex trade through Kosovo. It would be a piece of cake for someone to hide there.
C'mon, Hop, obviously he was just passing through the pure-as-the-driven-snow Serb homeland on his way to Bosnia, since everybody knows that Bosnia is a seething hotbed of Islamist extremism.
/sarcasm
Iraqi documents in Belgrade may derive from when Serbia under Milosevic and Iraq under Saddam Hussein were allies. There's been other post-Milosevic carryover in the Iraq-Serbia relationship with Serbia providing arms and military advisers to Iraq as recently as 2002.
There is a long tradition of terrorists fleeing to Belgrade--perhaps based on past support for the PLO. Remember Abu Abbas--the terrorist honcho of the Leon Klinghoffer murder on the Achille Lauro? He found refuge in the Palestinian "Embassy" in Serbia. From there he went on to Baghdad where he was captured by U.S. forces when we invaded.
Here's an interesting excerpt of Belgrade's past cooperation with Arafat:
In fact, while the Serbs were slaughtering Muslims with wanton abandon, Iraq, Libya and the Palestinian Authority remained openly supportive of Milosevic, the PA even inviting him to celebrate Orthodox Christmas in Bethlehem in 1999, and Syria and Lebanon remained neutral. (This contrasts sharply with reaction from Israel, which donated food and medical supplies, took in 112 non-Jewish refugees from Kosovo, and vowed to arrest Milosevic should he accept the PA’s invitation.
I refer you to the State Department's 2004 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, for Serbia and Montenegro wherein you'll find that 55% of the trafficked women going to Kosovo come from Serbia, which also supplies women to Bosnia, Croatia, and Western Europe, and to the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs for their 2005 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, wherein you'll find that both the smaller Southern (Bulgaria to Macedonia to Albania) and Northern (Bulgaria to Romania, Serbia, or Hungary) arms of the Balkan route bypass Kosovo.
To wit, your contention that Kosovo is the law enforcement black hole of the Balkans is simply incorrect, so any conclusions you draw from that premise are necessarily flawed as well.
And you buttress that claim by posting this?
I refer you to the State Department's 2004 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, for Serbia and Montenegro wherein you'll find that 55% of the trafficked women going to Kosovo come from Serbia
So apparently Kosovo does quite a bit of trafficking of women as well. And because two drug smuggling routes bypass Kosovo, that does not mean that other routes use Kosovo as well. Drug trafficking often runs along ethnic lines.
So thank you so much for proving my point for me - that Kosovo is a lawless zone of crime.
HTML code: <xmp></sarcasm></xmp> = Post text: </sarcasm>
So there.
LOL.
I just thought it was kinda funny that the terrorist POS was found in Serbia, when all the Serb apologists are always screaming about how Serbs are the historic bulwark of Christianity against the Mohammedan hordes, etc, etc. I can only imagine how loud they'd be screaming if they found this guy in Bosnia instead.
Thus proving the proverb that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
You posted stuff that backed up my assertions. When you shoot yourself in the foot, don't blame the guy you were trying to hit for that.
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