Bust In Madrid

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The cells of alleged al-Qaeda schemers busted in Europe over the last year have been accused of planning attacks — in Paris, Brussels, Rome and Strasbourg — that luckily never happened. None has been linked to the one that tragically did: the suicide bombing plot of Sept. 11, centered around Mohamed Atta’s apparently autonomous cell in Hamburg. That changed last week when Spanish investigative judge, Baltasar Garzón, released a preliminary indictment against eight men alleged to have constituted a long-standing al-Qaeda cell in Spain.

Not only did the cell actively recruit members to al-Qaeda, arrange their transport to Afghanistan training camps and provide illicit funding to the terrorist outfit, Garzón claims. But unlike its counterparts in Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, Milan and Sarajevo, the Madrid cell also "may have been directly involved in the preparation and implementation" of the U.S. attacks.

The eight are now in custody while Spanish investigators try to flesh out what is still a largely circumstantial case for that connection. The probe centers on the cell’s alleged leader, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, a Syrian-born family man known to his comrades as Abu Dahdah. He lived with his Spanish wife, a Muslim convert, and their four children in a leafy middle-class neighborhood on the southern fringe of Madrid.

Yarkas was reportedly well liked by his neighbors and always waved to his apartment complex’s doorman, who considered him "a lot more polite than many of the people who live here." Yarkas told neighbors he was a used car salesman, and he appeared to be just the gregarious type for that calling.

Or maybe not. A Spanish investigator said when Yarkas was picked up earlier this month, "his whole aspect changed once he was confronted with what we knew." He says the investigation and interrogation have revealed Yarkas to be "an intelligent, fanatic and cold" leader who brooked no opposition in the Madrid cell.

The evidence linking Yarkas to the Sept. 11 attacks is intriguing but thin. German investigators searching the Hamburg apartment once occupied by Atta found Yarkas’ former Madrid telephone number in a notebook belonging to the fugitive Said Bahaji. Yarkas reportedly told his interrogators that Islam is a "social religion" in which contacts are regularly passed around, and that he had no idea how his number had reached the Hamburg cell.

As another putative link to the suicide pilots, the Spanish indictment details five cryptic calls to Abu Dahdah’s phone in August and September of this year. The caller, known as Shakur, could be one participant in the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings who lived to tell the tale. While investigators have not revealed the geographical origin of the calls, they do have a physical description of Shakur as "short, fat, with little hair and about 34 years old."

In three calls in August, he talks of "cutting his old ties," claims to be "calmer psychologically" and says, "We have entered into the field of aviation and even cut the bird’s throat."

After the attacks Shakur’s calls became even more cryptic. On Sept. 26, according to the indictment, he asks Yarkas whether he is "taking his malaria medicine," and in their last known conversation three days later Shakur considers a move to the "purer air" of Spain and recalls travels they had undertaken together there in the past.

The indictment reveals that Spanish police have had the Abu Dahdah cell under surveillance for at least four years. Yarkas took control of a radical group called the Soldiers of Allah in October 1995 when its former leader, Palestinian-born Anwar Saleh, known as Sheik Salah, suddenly left Madrid for Peshawar, Pakistan. There, according to French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard, Salah became a key talent scout for al-Qaeda, sending the most promising recruits on to a training camp near Jalalabad. Garzón alleges that Yarkas and his co-conspirators were on the move constantly to send recruits and, when possible, money to support al-Qaeda. Some of the cell members allegedly made fraudulent use in Spain of credit cards stolen in Britain; a fraction of their proceeds went to Sheik Salah in Peshawar.

Another name wearyingly familiar to European investigators also figures in Garzón’s indictment: that of Abu Qatada, the Palestinian-born cleric whose fundamentalist sermons appear to have been a must-do item for al-Qaeda activists passing through London. Yarkas is alleged to have visited Qatada on at least one of his estimated 20 trips to London since 1996, and to have transferred money to him as well. Jacquard calls Qatada "the one person who invariably has had contact with everyone and anyone of stature in the radical Islamist world."

Jordanian government spokesman Saleh al-Qallab told Time last week that Amman has sought Qatada’s extradition from Britain for alleged terrorist activities and provided evidence against him years ago. Though his assets have been frozen by the U.S. and his welfare benefits taken away by the U.K., Qatada still lives freely in London.

The Spanish investigators consider it "curious," one of them told Time, that six of the eight men under indictment hail from Aleppo, the ancient Syrian city about which Atta wrote his urban planning dissertation and which he visited at least once, in 1994-5.

A seventh detainee is Moroccan and the eighth, Luis José Galán González, is a Spaniard from a wealthy family and a convert to what investigators call a particularly fanatic style of Islam. Last July he went to Indonesia to train with the group Lashkar Jihad, which investigators say is supported by and allied to al-Qaeda. When he was arrested police found pictures of him dressed as a mujahedin with a shotgun in one hand and a pistol in the other. "When we put him in jail, he said he wanted two things: a toothbrush and a woman," said a Spanish investigator. "We gave him a toothbrush."

Spanish intelligence sources have suggested to their foreign counterparts that some members of the Abu Dahdah cell may have met with Atta in the coastal town of Salou during his still largely unexplained 10-day Spanish sojourn in July. Last week investigators in Madrid would say only that they were still looking into that. Said one: "There’s no question that Spain was not just a strategic zone for laundering money and identities, but also a natural meeting point for Islamic militants from all over."

Clearly, the indictment is just a beginning for Garzón, who gained global fame when he sought the extradition in 1998 of Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte for crimes against humanity. In theory, Garzón can take his time on this case: Spain’s strong antiterrorism laws allow the eight to be held without trial for two years, with a possible extension of another two. In practice, though, the pressure is on to fill in the details of how the Abu Dahdah cell’s activities fit into al-Qaeda’s global designs.