Lead Madrid Terror Suspect Among Those Killed in Blast

Authorities Sunday identified the alleged ringleader behind last month’s railway bombings from among several suspects who blew themselves up a day earlier to avoid capture. But they later added three names to the list of Islamic radicals wanted in connection with the devastating attacks.

Spaniards remained jittery, especially in this Madrid suburb where the ruins of an apartment building bore testament to Saturday night’s explosion. Four suspects in the March 11 commuter train bombings killed themselves and a police officer as commandos closed in. On Sunday, large crowds jostled behind police lines to gawk at the site.

Evidence from the bombing scene, including charges and detonators, tied the dead suspects to two earlier bombings in the last three weeks, authorities said, and suggested they were all part of the same campaign -- one that the militants were preparing to continue.

The three additional suspects named Sunday night included Amer Azizi, a Moroccan whom Spanish investigators and Al Qaeda prisoners had tied to the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and on the Pentagon. But it was not clear what, if any, direct role he is alleged to have had in the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people.

Officials expressed relief at having made progress in dismantling the terror cell but remained alarmed at the frightening ability of Islamic radicals to operate in Spain.

“This is just the beginning,” fretted Esmeralda Prieto, a 36-year-old maid and neighbor of the destroyed apartment building in Leganes. “We aren’t even going to be able to go outside. How terrifying!”

Prieto and scores of residents in this community south of the capital watched Sunday as investigators sifted through the rubble. Body parts were scattered for yards, including into the empty swimming pool. The blast dug a 30-foot crater, ripped the brick-and-cement facade from two of the building’s five stories and collapsed ceilings. Dust still choked the air Sunday.

Authorities said they had identified the remains of the alleged ringleader, Tunisian national Sarhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, 35. His body was among the remains of at least four suspected militants who chanted in Arabic, opened fire and then detonated a powerful blast late Saturday as police commandos raided their apartment building.

A Spanish judge issued an international arrest warrant last week for Fakhet and five Moroccans for their alleged roles in the Madrid bombings. Another 15 people, most of them Moroccan, have been arrested and charged.

Another suspect for whom an arrest warrant was issued, Kounjaa Abdennabi, was among those who killed themselves in the apartment building, officials said. A third man was identified but was not on the arrest list. The fourth had not yet been identified, and there were reports that a fifth person’s remains had been found in the debris.

It was not known whether Jamal Ahmidan, listed in court papers as a key figure in the cell and also on the arrest list, was among the dead.

One special forces police officer was killed in the raid and blast, and 15 were wounded.

“The core group of those who carried out the [train bombings] have as of now been detained, or died in the collective suicide” of Saturday night, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.

The investigation is expected to turn its focus on possible accomplices or masterminds who may have given instructions from outside the country.

Acebes had named the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, an organization thought to have ties to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, as the prime suspect in the bombings.

Scouring the apartment, police said, they found 200 bomb detonators and at least 22 pounds of explosives, plus a couple of pounds of explosives rigged in a belt like those used by suicide bombers.

The explosive was the same putty-like substance used in the March 11 attacks and found in a bomb that did not explode on a train track Friday, investigators said. The copper detonators resembled those used in the earlier incidents and found hours after the March 11 blasts along with an audiotape in Arabic in a van abandoned at a railway station, the officials said.

“It is clear they were going to keep on attacking,” Acebes said, “because some of the explosives were prepared, packed and connected to detonators.”

Fakhet has been described in court papers and by those who knew him as a religious zealot who has been agitating for jihad, or holy war, in Spain.

Leganes is a mix of working-class and middle-income residents with a high number of recent immigrants, many from North Africa.

“I feel impotence and rage,” said Rosa Fernandez, a 55-year-old homemaker and Leganes resident. “They are going to kill us in our own homes. This is happening because we are too tolerant. I don’t want to be racist, but to all [immigrants] without papers, out of here!”

Times special correspondent Mateo-Yanguas reported from Leganes and Madrid and staff writer Wilkinson from Rome.