Eurabia update from Expatica, :
MADRID “” Spanish police arrested two more people – a Moroccan and an Algerian – on charges of recruiting Islamic militants to fight against United States-led forces in Iraq.
The arrests followed the detention of 11 people earlier this month accused of ties to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is a key figure in the insurgency in Iraq.
Ridoune Elourma, a 29-year-old Moroccan, was picked up Tuesday in Puigcerda, a city in the north-eastern region of Catalonia.
Police said they arrested him when he crossed into Spain to buy supplies for a construction project he was working on in the nearby French town of La Tour de Querol.
It emerged that Elourma was refurbishing a chalet belonging to Josep Pujol, son of former Catalan regional president Jordi Pujol.
In fact, he was at the wheel of an SUV owned by the politician’s wife, Marta Ferrusola, at the time of his arrest.
Josep Pujol issued a statement saying Elourma was simply an employee of the construction company he hired to do some work at his property, and that he had loaned the Moroccan his mother’s vehicle so he could pick up materials.
The other suspect apprehended this week was 31-year-old Algerian national Mohamed Saad, traced on Monday in Valencia.
Authorities had been looking for the two men since the raids mounted on 14 June as part of ‘Operation Tigris’ in which 11 men said to be linked to Zarqawi and his Ansar el Islam group were arrested.
The Spanish cell is said to have made up a support network for Zarqawi’s ‘jihad’ or holy war agsinst US-led forces in Iraq, connections in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Britain.