Spain names 13 more over bomb plot
From Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman
 |  Orange flames erupt from a train carriage, at right, at Atocha railway station, Madrid, on March 11, 2004 in this image aired on Spanish TV. |
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 Video of the March 11 bombing of a Madrid commuter train. (Viewer discretion advised)
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MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Thirteen more suspects have been implicated in an alleged Islamic plot to use a suicide truck bomber to blow up the National Court in Madrid, which handles terrorism cases, Spain's Interior Ministry announced Thursday.
In a written statement, the ministry said police arrested eight people Thursday in connection with the plot, and five people already jailed on other charges also were named as being involved.
They join 18 other people already charged in the alleged plot.
The suicide truck bombing plan apparently was aimed at killing judges, court personnel and civilians, and destroying court files in other cases against Islamic terrorists, said a court order issued last Saturday.
The plot allegedly was directed by an Algerian man, Mohamed Acharf, who is under arrest in Switzerland. Spain has asked for his extradition.
According to a court order, Acharf assembled the group in Spanish prisons where he was serving time. They called themselves Martyrs for Morocco.
The latest arrests, announced Thursday, netted two Moroccans in Madrid, two Algerians in southwestern Cadiz province and four Algerians in southeastern Valencia province, the Interior Ministry statement said.
The other five suspects implicated Thursday were three Algerians and two Moroccans, who are already serving time in three prisons located in northwestern, central and southern Spain.
Police and the government are now re-evaluating how suspected Islamic militants are housed in prison, so that similar plots cannot be hatched.
Police seized "abundant documentation, correspondence and Arab-language cassettes and videos," in the latest raids announced Thursday, the Interior Ministry statement said.
The court order last Saturday says the National Court bomb plot "was not only under way but that, if it has been stopped, it is due to the police and judicial action that was deployed."
Last Friday and Saturday, Judge Baltasar Garzon -- a principal investigator of Islamic terrorism in Spain -- arraigned the 18 initial suspects, and charged 17 of them late Saturday, mainly with belonging to a terrorist group that aimed to blow up the National Court, where Garzon and other anti-terrorism judges work.
The 18th suspect from the initial group was charged Wednesday with belonging to a terrorist group.
The suspects allegedly would have packed at least 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of explosives in a truck to blow up the court building on a busy street in central Madrid.
About 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosives were used in the bombs that hit the Madrid commuter rail network on March 11, killing 191 people and wounding more than 1,800.
The court order issued last Saturday linked one suspect of the National Court bomb plot, Abdelkrim Bensmail, to a suspected ringleader of the Madrid train bombings and to three men serving sentences in the United States for their roles in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York.
