Morocco and Islamic terror in Spain

Morocco is a major source of Islamic terrorists operating in Spain:

New Year's Eve 2003 was a working night for Jamal Ahmidan. The 33-year-old had drifted in and out of Spain for more than a decade, breaching the narrow Strait of Gibraltar to enter illegally from his native Morocco. Though he was known to Spanish police as a dealer of hash and ecstasy, he was generally considered a small-time delinquent. But Ahmidan had a taste for vengeance, which explains why he walked into a bar in Bilbao last New Year's to confront Larbi Raichi, a fellow drug dealer who owed him money. Without a word, Ahmidan, known by his nickname "El Chino," shot Raichi in the kneecap and walked out.

At the time, the encounter seemed an unremarkable example of the violent score settling that is typical in the drug underworld. But the shooting may have held ominous clues to a sinister plot. Spanish authorities now believe that Ahmidan and a group of associates--many of them fellow Moroccans who had immigrated to Spain--had been using profits from drug sales to finance jihadist terrorism. Their activity culminated in Madrid last March 11, when bombs hidden in backpacks exploded on four suburban trains, killing 191 people and wounding more than 1,500. Three weeks later, Ahmidan stood in a circle with six other terrorists--four other Moroccans, a Tunisian and an Algerian--in their safe house in the Madrid suburb of Leganés, reciting a martyr's chant. Surrounded by police, they detonated a powerful explosive charge, killing one Spanish policeman and blowing themselves to pieces.

And with the dramatic increase in Spain's immigrant population this situation is probably only going to get worse.