Spain jails 10 al Qaeda suspects

MADRID, 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 fleeing Spain ahead of their trial, court officials said Saturday.

The 10, including Al-Jazeera reporter Tayssir Alouni, 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 or collaborating with al Qaeda. Eleven people, including the alleged leader of al Qaeda in Spain, Imad Yarkas, were already in jail while the rest, including most of the principal suspects, are at large.

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

Along with Alouni, the other nine jailed Friday were Basam Dalati Salut, Sid Ahmed Boudjella, Ghasoub Al Abrash Ghayoun, Mohamed Khair El Saqqa, Abdalrahman Alarnot, Kamel Hadid Chaar, Jamal Hussein Hussein, Waheed and Ahmad Koshaji Kelani.

National Court prosecutor Pedro Rubira urged the 10 to 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 before court and being tried.”

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

Lawyers for the 10 criticized the order, saying their clients had had no intention of fleeing given that they had abided fully by their bail conditions and that they had lived and worked in Spain for years.

“How am I going to run away?” the leading daily El Pais reported Alouni as having asked in the court. “If I flee I risk my entire journalistic career.”

Alouni and another of the 10, Jamal Hussein Hussein, were said to have health problems that could worsen in jail, the paper said.

In last year’s indictment, Garzon said Alouni was a right-hand man of Yarkas, who is charged with providing financing and logistics 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 both Spanish and Syrian citizenship, was a well-known war correspondent in the Mideast for Al-Jazeera.

He was the Kabul correspondent for Al-Jazeera during the Afghanistan war, and one of the only journalists allowed by the hardline Taliban regime to operate from the areas in its control.

He was criticized by some for helping the station secure videotapes from bin Laden in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.