The latest on the Madrid blasts

Xymphora, whoever he is, has a good piece on the Madrid terror attacks.

More info is coming out about alleged terrorist Jamal Zougam, who has a background as a crook, a drinker, a nightclubber and a womanizer. His old buddies don't recall him as even slightly religious. He spent his time on scams involving stolen cel phones and credit cards.

Mr. X gloms onto one fact that also leaped out at me, and which I should have noted earlier: The individuals arrested with Zougam include three "Spaniards of Hindu origin." Hindus in al-Qaida? That's like Ann Coulter working for the DNC.

A Guardian New Service story offers an interesting tidbit about the ideological basis that may have driven Zougam (if he really did do it):

"One of Morocco's leading anti-terrorist experts, Mohamed Darif, told the Guardian that he believed two groups were involved in the Madrid attacks: one based in Morocco and one founded by al-Qaida's reputed head of operations in Spain, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, a Syrian also known as Abu Dahdah, now in a Spanish jail awaiting trial.

""Salafia Jihadia,'' Professor Darif said, ``is more a doctrine, like Marxism, than a single coherent organization. Zougam helped prepare the Casablanca attacks but left Tangier a month before they were carried out.''"

Brisard (the French investigator mentioned in an earlier post) has described a phone tap of a conversation between Zougam and Mohamed Fizazi, leader of Salafia Jihadia. Do we here have a case of a ne'er-do-well who meets a charismatic leader, "gets religion," and blows things up?

Or is something even darker afoot? Xymphora speculates we may have a case of stolen identity. Zougam was identified by a phone card left in an unexploded bomb. Was this the bomb found in the ever-so-convenient "clue dump" van? On the other hand, Zougam was questioned a year ago in a Spanish police sweep of al-Qaida suspects.