Police chief details meetings in Spain of bin Laden deputies

Associated Press WriterMADRID, Spain (AP) -- Osama bin Laden's deputies visited Spain earlier this year to meet a group of Algerians, now in jail, and apparently instructed them on attacks planned against U.S. interests in Europe, Spain's national police chief said Thursday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Juan Cortino also said that airline and car rental records show that suspected hijack ring leader Mohamed Atta flew to Madrid in January and again in July and logged 1,190 miles on a rental car.

Police are trying to determine whether Essid Sami Ben Khemais, jailed in Italy in April, and Mohammed Bensakhria, arrested June 22 by Spanish police, also met with Atta in Spain.

Atta is thought to have been on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center.

Cortino said an anti-terrorist squad is examining a library of instruction manuals and videotapes confiscated from the six Algerians who were arrested on Sept. 26 in raids around the country.

The tapes document the execution of terrorist attacks in Chechnya and Algeria, from pre-mission prayer sessions to the post-attack carnage, Cotino said.

He described "an abundance of videotapes which were possibly shot during actual attacks and served to train and motivate other terrorists."

Cortino said airline records show Atta flew to Madrid in January and again on July 7, when he rented the car in Madrid. Atta checked in twice to a seaside hotel about 375 miles away, near Barcelona. Then on July 19, he flew to Miami from Madrid, the police chief said.

Police are investigating whether at some point Atta took an inter-European flight from Barcelona, where he would not have been subject to passport control, for a meeting with other hijackers to plan the Sept. 11 attacks.

"That meeting could have taken place anywhere in Europe," Cotino said.

Atta may also have met some of the Algerians and Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian arrested in Belgium on Sept. 13.

Trabelsi, who police say was in Spain in August, is suspected of planning to carry out a suicide bombing against the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Five more suspects linked to the Spanish network have been arrested in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Ben Khemais -- a Tunisian who police believe was sent from Afghanistan to supervise bin Laden's terrorist operations in Europe -- spent four days in Spain in March and allegedly met two members of the Algerian group, police said.

Cotino said Ben Khemais and another five people arrested in Italy and Germany in April have been linked to an attack that had been planned for January on the U.S. Embassy in Rome. In response to the threat, the embassy was closed for several days.

During the raids in Spain last week, police confiscated telecommunications equipment purchased with stolen credit cards. Cotino said the material was destined for terrorist cells in Algeria, Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Cotino said Spain's growing immigrant population and proximity to North Africa have made it an increasingly attractive staging post for Islamic terrorist groups. He added police presently had no information that bin Laden was planning any attacks on Spanish soil.

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On the Net:

Interior Ministry anti-terrorism site (in Spanish), http://www.mir.es/oris/index.htm