MADRID (AFP) - A Spanish judge on Sunday jailed two Chechens suspected of belonging to Qaeda and possessing bomb-making material, a judicial source said. A Turk who was arrested at the same time on August 1 had already been jailed on Friday after Spain’s interior minister said investigators had evidence suggesting the trio were planning attacks in Europe. The Chechen pair was arrested on a bus heading for the French border and the Turk in a flat in the southern province of Andalucia. The judge jailed a Turk accused of being a Qaeda operative for “possession of explosive substances with terrorist aims”, but did not agree with prosecutors that the man belonged to a terrorist group, the source said.
After the men’s arrest Wednesday, Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said investigators had a “clear indication” that the men had been planning an attack in Spain or elsewhere in Europe.
He called the suspects “extremely dangerous people”, including one who was “a very important operative in Al-Qaeda’s international structure”.