Ties Run Deep in Probe of Spain Blast
It seems clear now that Jamal Zougam had dangerous connections. During a trip from Madrid to Tangier in August 2001, Spanish police wiretaps tracked the Moroccan-born shopkeeper’s movements into the heart of an extremist underworld girding for a global offensive. In his hometown of Tangier, Zougam joined a fellow Moroccan who had just helped arrange a meeting in Spain of plotters preparing the Sept. 11 attacks, according to court documents. Zougam also spent time with hard-core jihadis, or so-called holy warriors, who would be arrested after suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, last year, documents show. And Zougam made a pilgrimage to Mohammed Fizazi, a radical imam whose words were his weapons. Fizazi’s anti-Western sermons in Tangier and Hamburg, Germany, are a thread linking the Sept. 11 attacks, the Casablanca blasts and the recent train bombings in Madrid. Full Story