BERLIN, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Islamist terrorism is back in Europe after Spain arrested a group of terror suspects and Germany warned its Jewish community of concrete attack plans.
Spanish authorities over the weekend arrested 14 terror suspects and searched several buildings in Barcelona, Spain's second-largest city. Police said the group, which included 12 Pakistanis, an Indian and a Bangladeshi, was planning a terror attack in Barcelona. Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, Spain's interior minister, said the detainees belonged to a "well-organized group that had gone a step beyond radicalization."
Authorities confiscated explosives and four timing devices, Rubalcaba said. "When someone has timers in their home, you have no option but to think violent acts are being planned," he said.
Spanish authorities got tips from foreign intelligence services, the interior minister said, and Spanish newspapers have since reported it was a hint from Pakistan that triggered the raids.
The arrests come less than two months before Spain faces its general elections on March 9. The coming weeks will see Spanish authorities on high alert: An Islamist terrorist attack on Madrid commuter trains on March 11, 2004, that killed 191 people happened just three days before the last elections. More than 1,800 were injured.
Spain's government has been very tough on potential Islamists ever since the deadly Madrid bombings. While arrests happen frequently, suspects are often released within a short period of time because of a lack of evidence. It seems a bit different this time, however: On Monday, Spanish state television TVE reported that the group had planned to attack four targets in Barcelona, including a prayer house frequented by supporters of the late Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who was killed last month in a gun and suicide bomb attack at an election rally in Pakistan. Spanish daily El Periodico de Catalunya reported that the group was instructed by senior members of al-Qaida to execute the attacks.
Observers have linked the terror scare in Spain to the European tour of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, currently on an eight-day tour that will take him to England, France and Switzerland, but not to Spain. Neither will he visit Portugal, but officials there are nevertheless on high alert after Spain tipped of Lisbon that another group of potential terrorists may hide in Portugal.
In Germany, Jewish groups and the Israeli Embassy have been warned of an increased danger of terrorist attacks following the arrest of a suspected al-Qaida member in Lebanon.
The secretary-general of the Central Council of German Jews, Stephan Kramer, told the Berliner Morgenpost that the German Federal Criminal Office on Jan. 11 told him about the "heightened threat."
"But there is no need to be hysterical now," he added.
The daily said increased security precautions are taken nationwide, with authorities erecting concrete barriers in front of three buildings in Berlin (the Jewish Museum, a synagogue and a community houses) to prevent possible attacks with vehicles.
Police have been warned to be on the lookout for potential attack sources; they have since increased their patrols around Jewish institutions and synagogues.
Over the weekend, Berlin police arrested four Arab men who acted suspiciously near Jewish institutions, but three of them have since been released, with the fourth man still being held, but for unrelated charges.
And over the next days, the terror scare may travel to the Netherlands: There, authorities are bracing for violent reactions to an anti-Islam film scheduled to be broadcast this week. The film, which claims to reveal the Koran as a "source of inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror," was financed by controversial right-wing politician Geert Wilders. The man has received several death threats in the past.
