10 Suspected Al Qaeda Plotters Jailed in Spain

Ten suspects charged with membership in an Al Qaeda cell that allegedly helped prepare the Sept. 11 attacks have been jailed to prevent them from fleeing Spain before trial, court officials said Saturday.

The 10 were arrested last week and jailed Friday after being free on bail for more than a year. They were among 40 people, including Osama bin Laden, indicted by Judge Baltasar Garzon on charges of belonging to Al Qaeda or collaborating with the terrorist group. Eleven of them, including the alleged leader of an Al Qaeda cell in Madrid, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, were already in jail. But many, including most of the principal suspects, are at large.

Garzon charged some of the 40 with helping to prepare the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He issued the first indictments in September 2003 and argued that he had jurisdiction to seek prosecution because Al Qaeda used Spain as a staging ground for the attacks.

Court officials expect the trial to begin by the end of February.

National Court prosecutor Pedro Rubira urged that the 10 who were jailed Friday be sent to prison, saying, “The nearness of the trial increased the risk of flight from justice, especially given that the charges relate to a terrorist organization that has the means to prevent its militants appearing.”

Lawyers for the 10 criticized the order, saying their clients, who had lived and worked in Spain for years, had abided fully by their bail conditions and had no intent to flee.

Among those jailed Friday was Taysir Alouni, a reporter for the Arabic TV station Al Jazeera. “How am I going to run away?” the leading daily newspaper El Pais reported Alouni as asking in court. “If I flee, I risk my entire journalistic career.”

In last year’s indictment, Garzon said Alouni was a right-hand man of Yarkas, who is charged with providing financial and logistical support for Sept. 11 plotters in Europe.

Garzon charged that under the cover of journalistic trips, Alouni took money and messages to Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. He said Alouni also helped militants arriving in Spain by providing them with housing, money and residency papers.

Alouni, who has Spanish and Syrian citizenship, was the Kabul correspondent for Al Jazeera during the war in Afghanistan.