Spain busts AQ cell

Spain has discovered another terrorist cell of al-Qaeda, this one supporting the more active cells in Algeria. Yesterday they arrested eight suspected terrorists and may have shut down part of the lines of communication to North Africa:

The Spanish police on Tuesday arrested eight men suspected of giving financial and logistical support to a terrorist group in Algeria linked to Al Qaeda, Spain’s Interior Ministry said.

The antiterrorist investigation involved arrests in Barcelona, Pamplona and the northeastern province of Castellón.

The eight suspects are Algerian-born and range from 27 to 39 years old. They are believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings last December against United Nations and government offices in Algiers that killed 41 people, including 17 United Nations staff members.

Since then, the organization, Al Qaeda’s offshoot in North Africa, is believed to have carried out a number of other attacks against Algerians and foreigners in Algeria, including two bomb attacks last Sunday that killed 13 people, including a 57-year-old French engineer and his driver.

The new arrests show that AQ has a network tying Europe to North Africa. Originally, most people expected attacks in Europe to have logistical support from North Africa. This shows that the network works both ways, with European cells providing support to cells that operate in Muslim lands. A cell in Paris was exposed last December that performed the same mission.

This is a somewhat surprising turn of events, as AQ has turned more attention to attacks in the ummah than among the infidels. Analysts have predicted that AQ would start recruiting Europeans for attacks in Europe, but so far it appears that they have used them cautiously. Perhaps they have trust issues with non-Arabs, or maybe AQ thinks it can operate with more impunity in Algeria than it can anywhere else. They have succeeded in staging a series of attacks there, assisted by the European connections, that have killed dozens of people — mainly Muslims.

AQ leadership appears stuck in a strategy that almost guarantees to further marginalize them. Whether they are too stupid to realize this or simply cannot launch attacks anywhere else remains to be seen. Either way, the terrorists continue to be their own worst enemy.

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