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Spanish Police Arrest Suspected Bin Laden Associate
MADRID, June 22 (News Agencies) - Spanish police arrested a suspected Islamic activist wanted by both French and German police and believed to be linked to Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, the interior ministry announced here Friday.
The Algerian suspect, named as Mohamed Bensakhria, was arrested by police in Alicante, southeastern Spain in a joint operation with the secret services.
A ministry spokesman told AFP that Bensakhria had been one of the most wanted by western police forces since he escaped during an operation by German police in Frankfurt at the end of 2000.
"The suspected terrorist is believed to be the head of the Meliani commando, linked to Osama bin Laden," the spokesman said, adding that, "he is one of the Islamic terrorists most wanted by Western police."
He said that Bensakhria had escaped when German police arrested a number of suspected Islamic activists in Frankfurt in a sweep last December.
They were suspected of belonging to Bin Laden's network, which is blamed for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Members of the group top the FBI's most wanted list.
The Spanish spokesman said the French judiciary had issued an international arrest warrant for Bensakhria after evidence emerged that the Meliani group was preparing a series of attacks in France, according to the interior ministry.
The planned attacks were aimed at a cathedral in the eastern city of Strasbourg as well as a local market, he said.
According to the ministry, the commando unit included several Afghans who had been trained in assembling and handling explosive devices in Afghanistan. Several of them have already been arrested in Britain.
"The Meliani commando was integrated in the Al Qaida structure, the operational wing of bin Laden's international terrorist network," the ministry said in a statement.
"Bensakhria had completely changed his appearance. Whereas, in Germany he was well-groomed, in Alicante he looked scruffy to try and pass himself off as an immigrant worker," the spokesman said, while giving no further details on the arrest.
Shortly after the arrests in Frankfurt, German Interior Minister Otto Schily said "Islamic terrorism" posed a huge threat to the country.
He said the German government would make "a maximum effort to dismantle the complex structures of these groups, which have an international reach."
The German sweep was organized in cooperation with Italian authorities investigating suspected Islamic activists centered in Milan, where five people believed to be linked to the Frankfurt group were taken into custody in early April.
The Italian group was reportedly planning attacks against U.S. installations in the country, a threat that caused the U.S. embassy in Rome to close its doors for a week in January 2001.
Washington holds Bin Laden responsible for the 1998 bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people.
The Saudi has been living as a "welcomed guest" in Afghanistan since 1996.
The U.S. has offered a five-million-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Bin Laden. The offer has so far gone unclaimed.
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