Sat, Apr 10, 2004 page6

• Video threatens more terrorist attacks in Spain

  DEADLINE The suspected terrorists who blew themselves up last weekend may have made the video, which demands that Spain withdraw its troops from Iraq

  • AP
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  A videotape found in an apartment where suspected terrorists blew themselves up last weekend gives Spain a deadline to withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan or face more bloodshed at home, the Interior Ministry said.

  In the video, three heavily armed people read a statement in the name of the Al Mufti Brigades and Ansar al-Qaeda giving Spain one week to "leave Muslim lands immediately," authorities said. A copy of the text was sent by the Interior Ministry to AP on Thursday.

  "Should you not do this within the space of a week, starting today, we will continue our jihad until martyrdom," it added.

  "You know that you are not safe, and you know that [US President George W.] Bush and his administration will bring only destruction. We will kill you anywhere and in any manner," it read.

  It was not clear when the video had been filmed or when the deadline would begin. Police said they don't rule out that the video was filmed by some of the suspected terrorists before their collective suicide during a police raid last Saturday.

  An Interior Ministry spokesman said the video was found in the rubble of the apartment during recent searches. He added that it was damaged in the explosion and had to be minutely analyzed by police forensic scientists. It has been sent to the National Court as evidence.

  Spain has 1,300 troops in Iraq and 125 in Afghanistan. The incoming Socialist government has said it will withdraw the soldiers from Iraq by June 30 unless the UN takes control of the postwar occupation.

  Last week, a Spanish newspaper said it received a threat from a group linked to al-Qaeda saying Spain would be turned into "an inferno" unless Madrid withdrew its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Also Thursday, the Madrid daily El Mundo reported that the suspected terrorists who perpetrated the March 11 commuter railroad bombings, which killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800 others, were plotting to attack a shopping center outside Madrid.

  Police combing through the suspects' apartment found maps of Parquesur, a retail and leisure complex less than 1km from the apartment in Leganes, and at least two backpacks and a belt, all packed with dynamite and wired to detonators, the newspaper said.

  A National Court official said Wednesday that the suspects had planned another major attack in Madrid, possibly during this week's Easter celebrations, but did not give more details.

  El Mundo said the attack was to have been staged last Sunday or during the week before Easter, when millions of Spaniards are on vacation and schools are out, making the crowds that normally pack Parquesur even larger. The facility has 193 stores, a hotel and a 2,500-seat cinema complex.

  In Sarajevo, authorities said on Thursday that they were investigating whether a Bosnian national was among the suspects in the March 11 train bombings.

  Spanish police asked the Bosnia office of Interpol to look into the suspect, who was identified as 23-year-old Sanel Sjekirica, said Brane Pecanac, the head of the local Interpol bureau.

  The Spanish news agency Europa Press reported that from last November Sjekirica was registered as a computer science student at the University of Oviedo in northern Spain.

  Seventeen people, including 13 Moroccans, have been charged in the case -- six with mass murder and the rest with collaborating or belonging to a terrorist group.
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