Madrid issues arrest warrant for suspected terror group leader

MADRID, Spain -- A 35-year-old Tunisian is believed to have led the group suspected in the railway bombings in Madrid, Spain, according to the international warrant for his arrest released Thursday. .\nSarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet is one of six people sought in warrants a Spanish judge issued Wednesday but made public a day later. He allegedly helped arrange the rental of the house outside Madrid where investigators say the bombs were assembled for the March 11 attacks.\nFour of the others had been at the house, their warrants said.\nFakhet's warrant describes him as "leader and coordinator of the people allegedly implicated." It does not suggest he was the overall organizer of the attacks, which killed 191 people and injured over 1,800.\nInvestigators in Spain and elsewhere have named several people as the possible masterminds of the bombings. Earlier this week, the government identified the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group as the main focus of the investigation. It was the forerunner of Salafia Jihadia, which Morocco blamed for deadly bombings in Casablanca, Morocco.\nJamal Zougam, a Moroccan already jailed and charged with mass murder in the case, also is considered a prime suspect. Police traced a cell phone found attached to an unexploded bomb to the shop he ran in Madrid. Zougam also has been linked to members of an al Qaeda cell in Spain.\nThe names of two people, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abdelkrim Mejjati, have surfaced in the past two weeks as possible top organizers of Spain's worst terrorist attack. Though, neither was among those named in the new arrest warrants.\nFrench investigator Jean-Charles Brisard said last week Spanish officials saw al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked to al Qaeda, as the brains behind the bombings.\nThe Spanish media has quoted Moroccan intelligence sources as saying Mejjati, a Moroccan, was the on-the-ground organizer and had been in Madrid three days before the attacks. But Moroccan authorities told The Associated Press they were not clear what role he had played.