September 2002-October 2003: Informer Closely Watches Madrid Bombers

Abdelkader Farssaoui, a.k.a. Cartagena, is the imam of a mosque in the town of Villaverde, near Madrid, Spain. In 2007, he will testify under oath as a protected witness that he was recruited to be a police informer beginning in late 2001, if not earlier. He says that he is also working as an informant for the government of Morocco, but he nonetheless becomes highly trusted for the Spanish. Apparently, he is little used by the Spanish until about September 2002. But starting that month, he informs on a group of men attending his mosque, led by Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet. Other members in the group he watches include Said Berraj, Mustafa Maymouni (Fakhet’s brother-in-law), Mohammed Larbi ben Sellam, and Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed. He is also encouraged to bring Jamal Zougam closer to the group, although he does not see Zougam doing anything criminal. All of these men will later have alleged roles in the 2004 Madrid train bombings (see 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004), except for Maymouni, who will be arrested in Morocco in 2003 for a key role in the Casablanca bombings there that year (see May 16, 2003). Even before Maymouni was arrested, Farssaoui has been giving warnings to his handlers that the group is talking about conducting attacks in Spain and Morocco (see April-June 2003). He is able to get the mobile phone numbers of all of the men so police can monitor those phones. Police do monitor the group members in other ways to confirm what Farssaoui is learning (see January 17, 2003-Late March 2004). In October 2003, Farssaoui reports that Fakhet is “looking for martyrs.” But Farssaoui is told by his handlers to immediately leave Madrid for another assignment (see October 2003). He does, so he stops monitoring the bombers just as they began planning their bombing in detail. He later says that his handlers forbid him to share what he learns with judge Baltasar Garzon, who is leading investigations into al-Qaeda related cases in Spain. They also encourage him to exaggerate what the suspects are doing so they can be indicted, and he does. This testimony Farssaoui will give in 2007 will contradict some details of earlier testimony he gave in the same trial, but he will claim that it took him time to find courage to tell the whole truth. [El Mundo (Madrid), 10/18/2004; El Mundo (Madrid), 10/21/2004; El Mundo (Madrid), 3/7/2007; ABC (Spain), 3/7/2007] He will also claim that he later accidentally discovers Farket, the leader of the group he was watching, is also a government informant (see Shortly After October 2003).