Europe 'must share terror intelligence'

Pressure mounted on European states yesterday to step up intelligence co-operation as it emerged that a failure to share sensitive information may have been partly responsible for the Madrid train bombings.

Pressure mounted on European states yesterday to step up intelligence co-operation as it emerged that a failure to share sensitive information may have been partly responsible for the Madrid train bombings.

Officials were discussing ways of overcoming traditional resistance to information-sharing last night, as the French and German presidents called for a significant increase in contacts between Europe's secret services.

The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, said: "I think our main task is to improve cooperation between the intelligence services." But France and Germany played down proposals for a "European CIA".

Three officers from the Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist branch have flown to Madrid to gather intelligence on the bomb blasts which could be useful in investigating links in the UK and preventing an attack in Britain.

Spanish police said they were searching for five new Moroccan suspects, and Basque police detained an Algerian in the city of San Sebastian who had threatened "to fill Atocha [station] and Castellana Avenue with corpses" when he was first detained in January. The Algerian, Ali Amrous, who was held in connection with drugs trafficking, is to be questioned today by the judge leading the train bombing investigation, Baltasar Garzon.

Jamal Zougam, the chief suspect, and his half-brother, Mohamed Chaoui, arrested in Madrid on Saturday, have been linked to Islamist terrorist activities in Spain, France, Norway and their native Morocco over the past nine years.

Evidence from phone taps and police raids linked them to the 11 September attacks in the US and bomb explosions in Casablanca last May, as well as to a suspected terror network in France, with connections in Germany and Britain. Mr Zougam allegedly travelled to Norway in 1995 to arrange for a transfer of Islamist fighters from Bosnia to training camps belonging to an extremist group in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

The same group, Ansar al-Islam, attacked and scattered by US and Kurdish forces during the Iraqi war last year, is now believed to be involved in many of the attacks in Iraq.

Mr Zougam, 30, was described by an acquaintance yesterday as "the kind of guy who'd walk around in a Lacoste T-shirt in the summer. He liked to wear good labels. He was very modern, but he didn't drink alcohol".

He was one of 40 arrested in Spain in November 2001 on suspicion of involvement in the planning of the 11 September attacks. Twelve are still in custody but Mr Zougam was released because there was insufficient evidence against him.

He was also the subject of an arrest warrant issued by Moroccan authorities for his suspected role in the bombing of a restaurant in Casablanca - using rucksacks - last May.

None the less, he and his half-brother were still at large - and apparently not under surveillance - running a mobile telephone shop in Madrid when 10 rucksack bombs exploded in suburban trains last Thursday morning. A mobile phone, converted to a detonator, found in a rucksack which did not explode, has been linked by Spanish investigators to their shop.

Jean-Charles Brisard, a private French investigator of terrorist groups employed by families of the 11 September victims, said the fact that Mr Zougam seemed to have slipped through the net indicated the need for more effective collaboration between security forces.

"Everyone assumed that he was of small importance. Now it seems that he might have been a much bigger fish," M. Brisard said. "You cannot necessarily blame the Spanish authorities for letting him go. You have to have proof before you can hold someone.

"But a pattern of Mr Zougam's activities emerges in different national files. It is clear proof of the need for more active co-operation across European borders."

Mr Zougam appears in Spanish and French investigators' files as meeting in 1998, in a Madrid mosque, the Frenchman David Courtailler, who converted to an extreme strain of Islam while living in London.

M.Courtailler will appear in court in Paris today accused of "conspiring with terrorists".

Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch is also investigating links between the Madrid bombings and al-Qa'ida supporters based in London, a senior police source confirmed yesterday. The inquiries are thought to centre on telephone calls made by Mr Zougam. Detectives will want to establish whether calls made were to suspected al-Qa'ida supporters based in London. Those could include followers of the Islamic cleric Abu Qatada, the man described as Osama bin Laden's "ambassador in Europe", who has been held in a top-security jail in London for more than a year.

* The French justice ministry said yesterday that it was taking seriously threats of a possible attack against French interests from an Islamist group that calls itself "Servants of Allah the Powerful and Wise".