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Spanish Police Arrest Terror Suspects

State radio reported on Tuesday that Spanish police have arrested 17 people who are suspected of helping to recruit Islamic militants to carry out attacks in Iraq. The arrests took place in the early-morning hours in Madrid, Barcelona and in Basque country in Northern Spain. Basque country is known to be rife with those opposed to the government in Madrid, desirous as they are of an independent homeland for the Basque people.

A Civil Guard spokesman says the operation was ongoing, but would not provide specific details. Basque separatists in Spain have been known in the past to frequently set off bombs - with warnings - to protest the policies of Madrid and as well to give imagery to their cause. The 2004 train bombings in Madrid were at first thought to have been carried out by Islamic militants or the Basque separatist group ETA.

Reports indicate that one of those men arrested is an imam of a mosque, and a suspect who may be linked to an attack on Italian police in Iraq. A 2003 suicide bomb attack on an Italian military police base in southern Iraq killed 18 Italians and nine Iraqis. After the 2004 Madrid bombings swept a Socialist government into power, Spain itself pulled all its forces out of Iraq - what many critics note was probably the goal of the bombing in the first place.