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{{Spain on Sunday deported a Moroccan man after he completed a 10-year jail sentence for obtaining the explosives used in the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, the government said.}}

Spain’s National Court in 2007 sentenced Rafa Zouhier, 34, to 10 years behind bars for collaborating with the Islamist cell that carried out the country’s deadliest-ever terrorist attack.

The court ruled that Zouhier had acted as the intermediary between a former Spanish miner who supplied the explosives and the leader of the cell that carried out the attacks, but did not know the use to which the dynamite would be put.

Although Zouhier, a former drug dealer turned police informer, was not convicted and sentenced for weapons trafficking until 2007, he had been behind bars since 19 March 2004.

Spanish police escorted him to Tangiers in northern Morocco immediately after his release in the early hours of Sunday from the Puerto de Santamaria prison in Cadiz in southwestern Spain, an interior ministry spokesman said.

Officers flanked Zouhier, who wore a black hooded sweatshirt and had his hands handcuffed behind his back, as they led him from a white police van into a small plane that took him to Morocco, a video released by the ministry showed.

Zouhier, a martial arts expert from Casablanca who moved to Spain when he was a teenager, was deported to Morocco under a provision in Spanish law that makes conviction for a serious crime grounds for expulsion.

During his trial, Zouhier declared himself to be “super innocent”. He was expelled from the courtroom on four occasions – including once for apparently failing to take the proceedings seriously when he nudged another defendant with his elbow.

{{Swift deportation }}

Public prosecutors had asked for Zouhier to be jailed for 20 years for his part in the bombings.

Victims’ groups welcomed his swift deportation.

“We are relieved, satisfied and happy because this risk to society is now in Morocco,” Pilar Manjon, the president of the March 11 Victims’ Association who lost her 20-year-old son in the bombings, told public radio RNE.

“He will no longer do shady deals with drugs in our country nor will he obtain explosives for any other attack,” she added.

Zouhier married a 32-year-old Spanish computer sciences teacher in September 2013. According to daily newspaper El Mundo, they met at a nightclub where he worked as a bouncer before his arrest, and they had hoped to remain in Spain after his release.

Spanish courts have sentenced 18 people for the shrapnel-filled bomb attacks that killed 191 people and injured about 2 000 on four commuter trains heading for Madrid’s Atocha station.

The cordinated attack was claimed by militants who said they had acted on al-Qaeda’s behalf in retaliation for Spain’s involvement in the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The seven chief suspects committed suicide on 3 April, 2004, by blowing themselves up in an apartment near Madrid, also killing a policeman.

{AFP}

{{Malian authorities are holding one of the country’s most wanted Islamist fighters after he surrendered to French troops, a military source and French radio said on Sunday.}}

France had been pursuing Abu Dar Dar, a leader of the al-Qaeda-linked Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujwa), since Paris launched a military offensive in January 2013 to drive out Islamists who had seized control of northern Mali.

“I confirm that Abu Dar Dar has handed himself into Serval troops,” said a Malian military source in the northern city of Gao, using the name of the French military mission.

“He was then turned over to our troops and transferred immediately to Bamako since yesterday evening.”

Several fighters in the region go by the name Abu Dar Dar and the source did not specify which one had been detained. Radio France International identified the captured Islamist as the Mujwa leader, without citing a source.

French armed forces could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mujwa was one of two militant groups that attacked French nuclear company Areva’s uranium mine in northern Niger in May 2013.

The detention comes days after French troops killed Oumar Ould Hamaha, a jihadist known as ‘Red Beard’ with a $3m US government bounty on his head.

The French-led military offensive has broken the grip of the al-Qaeda-linked militants across northern Mali but pockets of fighters still operate from desert and mountain bases.

– Reuters

{{Corruption is “hurting Africa”, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has reportedly said, as he vowed a crackdown against graft activities in his country, warning that those implicated would be imprisoned.}}

According to {New Zimbabwe.com}, Mugabe made these remarks at a luncheon hosted by security services chiefs and the Public Service Commission to celebrate his 90th birthday.

“Corruption, corruption, corruption! It is hurting us, it is hurting Africa,” the report quoted Mugabe as saying.

Mugabe’s warning comes following media reports of alleged corruption involving senior officials across a number of state-run bodies including the government pensions’ authority, power utilities and the national airline, Air Zimbabwe.

Mugabe also revealed that a Cabinet minister and a member of parliament demanded a combined $120 000 to assist a prospective foreign investor.

Zimbabwe’s economy continues to dwindle with Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa recently revealing that the country’s reserves would only be enough to buy 1 400 tons of maize.

– News24