Spain hunts 'detonator bag' man
From CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- An international arrest warrant has been issued for an Algerian man whose fingerprints allegedly match those found on a plastic bag of detonators linked to the March 11 Madrid train bombings.
The prints were those that the FBI mistakenly matched to an Oregon lawyer, a spokeswoman for Spain's National Court told CNN.
Also on Friday, Spain's Cabinet moved to improve cooperation between police agencies in the fight against terrorism by creating the National Center for Anti-Terrorist Coordination, spurred by the attacks, Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said.
Spanish Judge Juan del Olmo -- who is leading the investigation into the bombings -- issued the arrest warrant for Ouhnane Daoud. Spanish police last week said Daoud's fingerprint was on the bag found in a van hours after the Madrid attacks.
When Spanish police initially failed to identity the fingerprint they asked investigators in other countries to help.
The FBI concluded the print belonged to Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer. Mayfield was arrested as a material witness, but released two weeks later when Spanish investigators disputed the FBI's conclusion. The FBI dropped the case and issued a rare apology to Mayfield, who is a convert to Islam.
Spanish investigators had cast doubt on the reliability of the FBI's technique used to match the print to Mayfield. Spanish police -- using evidence that was initially unknown -- later came up with what they said was a positive match with Daoud, a source told CNN.
The source would not describe what the new evidence was that led police to match the print to Daoud, but it was enough to convince the judge to issue the arrest warrant on Friday.
Spain's cabinet voted Friday to create the National Center for Anti-Terrorist Coordination to gather and evaluate information with the aim of "preventing terrorism to the extent humanly possible," Alonso said at a nationally televised news conference following the weekly cabinet meeting.
The center to be staffed by officers from the National Police and the Civil Guard -- Spain's two main police agencies -- will provide support for these agencies rather than becoming a third operational agency in the fight against terrorism, Alonso said.
"We are convinced it will improve the coordination between the National Police and the Civil Guard and the National Intelligence Center (Spain's spy agency) in the fight against terrorism," Alonso said.
The attacks on four Madrid commuter trains killed 191 people, by official count, including an eight-month old fetus.
The attack has been blamed on Islamic terrorists and 19 people, including more than a dozen Moroccans, have been charged in the case in Spain, while the investigation continues.
Officials have been trying to determine whether Spanish police services were too focused on the Basque separatist group ETA, blamed for more than 800 killings over the past 35 years. In doing so they may have ignored the threat of Islamic terrorism in Spain, and whether there had been sufficient coordination between the two main police agencies and the national spy agency in fighting terrorism.
The center will have a staff of 18 National Police officers, 18 Civil Guard agents, six civilian officials, five translators, and two assistants. It will be a unit of the Interior Ministry.
The creation of the center comes a day after Spanish Parliament created a commission to study the events leading up to, and immediately after, the March 11 attacks. The commission's work will begin on June 15, after the June 13 elections in Spain for European Parliament deputies.
