26-year-old Pakistan national Aqueel Ur Rehman Abassi arrived in Madrid yesterday following his extradition from Holland. He is alleged to be the only one of a gang of eleven Islamic terrorists planning a suicide bomb attack on Barcelona Metro who escaped arrest in a major police operation undertaken last January.

High court judge, Ismael Moreno, who is handling the investigation, has stated that there is evidence that the terror cell had achieved "operative capacity," and was about to start "to become able to manufacture bombs."

Abassi, who is also linked to an unexecuted suicide bomb plot in Germany, has been studying for a business studies degree in Breda since 2007 on a legal student visa that allowed him to unrestricted freedom to travel anywhere within the European Union.

Since his arrest last March, at which time there was insufficient evidence to charge him with terrorist activities, he has been held in a detention centre for illegal immigrants in southern Holland, where he was re-arrested last June.

Refusing voluntarily extradition, it has taken two months to process the appropriate paperwork.

Related news:

Barcelona Islamists linked to Bhutto murder
By: thinkSPAIN
Tuesday, February 12, 2008

http://www.thinkspain.com/news/noticia.asp?CodNoticia=14355