"The inner circle of people who committed the terrorist acts are either behind bars or died in yesterday's collective suicide," said Interior Minister Angel Acebes.

He said three of the suspects who died in the April 3 raid had been identified. They included Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, known as "the Tunisian," who was the suspected ringleader of the Madrid train bombings March 11.

The bodies of two further suspected terrorists were discovered April 4 after the standoff, in which a special forces police agent was killed.

The badly mutilated body of a fourth suspect wearing an explosives belt was discovered floating in a swimming pool next to the building. It had yet to be identified, Acebes said at a news conference.

Later, a source familiar with the investigation said that a fifth body had been found in the debris of the bombed-out apartment in the Madrid suburb of Leganes where the men had been holed up.

Acebes said the raid, which came just a day after the discovery of a bomb on a high-speed rail track between Madrid and Seville, had averted further attacks in Spain, which has been a key U.S. ally in Iraq under the outgoing conservative government.

The Japan Times Weekly: April 10, 2004
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