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Spain Arrests al Qaeda Suspect with WTC Footage
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
By Chris Brown
Reuters

The latest police swoop, led by High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon -- well-known for his attempt to arrest Chile's ex-director Augusto Pinochet -- was part of an ongoing investigation into al Qaeda's presence in Spain and brought to 23 the number of suspects arrested by Spanish police.

MADRID -- Reuters
Spanish police arrested three suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network on Tuesday, one of whom had videotaped key buildings in the United States, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.

One of the men, all of whom are of Syrian origin, had various video tapes from an apparent tourist trip to the United States during which he had recorded footage of various installations, Acebes told reporters.

Two tapes showed mostly images of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York from all angles and distances and recorded before the Sept. 11 suicide attacks that killed about 3,000 people.

The video, shot during a 1997 trip, "was obviously not what a tourist would make," the minister added.

Other footage included the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, the theme parks Disney Land and Universal Studios, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building in Manhattan, Brooklyn Bridge and shots of a New York airport, the Interior Ministry said in a later statement.
(More: The Macon Telegraph News Source)
2002 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan