2 arrested in Madrid train bombing case

MADRID, Spain -- Police have arrested a Syrian and an Egyptian in the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people, the interior minister said Thursday.\nThe two were arrested Wednesday in Irun, near Spain's border with France, and were identified as Adman Waki, 28, of Syria, and Ahmed Ibrahim Kassem, 27, of Egypt, said Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso.\nHe described Waki as "an important person in the structure behind the carrying out of the attacks."\nWaki had links with five of the seven people suspected in the bombings, Alonso said. The seven killed themselves Apr. 3 in a suicide blast in an apartment on the outskirts of Madrid as police prepared to arrest them.\nAlonso gave no details regarding what suspected role Kassem might have played in the attacks.\nNews reports said Waki is also believed to have used the same prepaid phone card and telephone as the alleged ideological mastermind of the railway attacks, Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, of Tunisia. He was one of the seven killed in the Apr. 3 blast.\nThe arrests were ordered by Juan del Olmo, the investigating magistrate.\nSeventeen people have been jailed on provisional charges in relation to the bombings, which are blamed on Islamic militants with possible connections to al Qaeda.\nNews reports said one of the two arrested Wednesday also may have had contact with Rabei Osman Ahmed, a 27-year-old Egyptian. As the suspected ringleader of the attackers, Ahmed has been held in solitary confinement since being extradited to Spain from Italy Tuesday.\nAlonso said he believed documents and computer material released by Italian authorities regarding Osman Ahmed "would show that this person had an important role in the attacks"