PARIS — The Spanish police on Tuesday arrested eight men suspected of giving financial and logistical support to a terrorist group in Algeria linked to Al Qaeda, Spain’s Interior Ministry said.
The antiterrorist investigation involved arrests in Barcelona, Pamplona and the northeastern province of Castellón.
The eight suspects are Algerian-born and range from 27 to 39 years old. They are believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings last December against United Nations and government offices in Algiers that killed 41 people, including 17 United Nations staff members.
Since then, the organization, Al Qaeda’s offshoot in North Africa, is believed to have carried out a number of other attacks against Algerians and foreigners in Algeria, including two bomb attacks last Sunday that killed 13 people, including a 57-year-old French engineer and his driver.
After those attacks, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, called on foreign companies not to leave Algeria, even though he acknowledged in a radio interview on Monday that it had become a “dangerous country.”
“This is a country where we have to work, where the commercial and friendship links are very strong and must be developed,” Mr. Kouchner said.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has also claimed responsibility for the kidnapping in February of two Austrian tourists in Tunisia, who are believed to be held in Mali.
In the Spanish raids, the police detained 10 other people suspected of lending support to the main cell, the Interior Ministry said in a statement following the arrests.
The statement added that the police seized 7,000 euros, worth about $10,800, and found evidence of money transfers to Algeria, bank books, telephone cards, CDs, videos and “diverse” documents, which they did not describe.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said that the raid was “very important, a big hit” and described the cell as typical of the type that is active in Spain, “devoted to financing, recruitment and sending warriors to conflict zones.”
European antiterrorist investigators are concerned that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is determined to carry out new attacks on foreign targets in North Africa and that it could even decide to attack Europe directly. The Spanish raid is the latest indication that the terrorist organization enjoys logistical support inside Europe.
After a lengthy investigation, the French police last December smashed a cell near Paris that was suspected of furnishing logistical and material support to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Eight men were arrested and two remain in custody.
The group was believed to have sent money as well as night-vision goggles, cellphones, satellite navigation devices and other electronic equipment to Algeria, according to police investigators, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing criminal investigation.
The terrorist organization was formerly called the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, a longtime insurgent group, but changed its name when it announced its alliance with Al Qaeda in January 2007.
Dale Fuchs contributed reporting from Madrid.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
