Spain deports 11-M terror middleman

On Sunday Spain deported a Moroccan terror associate for his part in the Madrid bombings.

The man, a former drug dealer turned police informant, had completed a 10-year sentence for his part in the terror attack at Madrid’s Atocha station.

Rafa Zouhier assisted in obtaining the explosives that were used in the 2004 train bombings that killed 191 people.

The country’s national court sentenced Zouhier, 34, to 10 years for his links with the Islamist cell that was responsible for the country’s worst ever terrorist attack.

Zouhier been behind bars since 2004, but was not convicted and sentenced for weapons trafficking until 2007.

Zouhier, who maintained his innocence throughout, was said to have acted as an intermediary between the Spanish miner who supplied the explosives and the terrorist cell leader who masterminded the attack.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said that Spanish police escorted Zouhier to Tangiers in northern Morocco immediately after his release in the early hours of Sunday from the Puerto de Santa Maria prison in Cadiz in south-western Spain.