Madrid ? Spain’s top terrorism judge has issued an indictment that links last month’s Madrid train bombings with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Judge Baltasar Garzon filed an indictment Wednesday alleging that Amer Azizi, a Moroccan national, helped organize a July 2001 meeting in Spain that gathered key plotters in the 9-11 attacks, including ringleader Mohamed Atta.

Earlier, Spanish authorities identified Azizi as one of the suspects in the Madrid bombings.

Azizi, a fugitive, also was included in an indictment Garzon handed down last September against al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and 34 other terror suspects. Azizi was charged then with belonging to a terrorist organization.

In the new indictment, Azizi is charged with multiple counts of murder — “as many deaths and injuries as were committed” on Sept. 11, 2001 — for helping to plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Azizi provided lodging for people who attended the July 2001 meeting in Spain and acted as a courier, passing on messages between plotters, Garzon said in the indictment.

Witnesses have placed Azizi in Madrid after the train bombings, reinforcing suspicions that he played a central role, possibly as an emissary of al-Qaida bosses elsewhere.

The indictment seemed to confirm what European counter-terrorism officials have been saying for weeks: that al-Qaida and its affiliates have made Europe their target of choice.

“Before 9-11, al-Qaida valued Europe as a platform for planning and staging attacks (against the U.S.) and for recruiting,” said Jonathan Stevenson, a terrorism expert at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“Things have changed. The U.S. is less vulnerable, and al-Qaida is less capable,” he said. “Al-Qaida is looking for soft targets of opportunity. That has made Europe much more attractive as a target.”