Aruba

Police search home in missing teen case

Aruban police Wednesday searched the home of a high-ranking Dutch judicial official whose son was with an Alabama honors student the night she disappeared, carrying out plastic garbage bags full of items and towing away two vehicles.

Earlier, the official, Paul van der Sloot, asked a judge for permission to see his 17-year-old son, Joran, who remains in police custody with two other young men in the May 30 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, 18.

Lawyers for the three – Joran van der Sloot and brothers Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satish Kalpoe, 18 – also asked a judge to see the evidence against their clients.

Holloway was celebrating her graduation from Mountain Brook, Ala., High School with 124 other students and seven chaperones when she vanished during the early hours of May 30.

Pakistan

Taliban suspect says bin Laden alive and well

Osama bin Laden and fugitive Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar are alive and well, a purported Taliban commander said in a TV interview broadcast Wednesday, adding that he still receives orders from Omar.

Pakistan’s Geo television broadcast the interview with the man it identified as Taliban military commander Mullah Akhtar Usmani, a former Afghan aviation minister.

A black turban shielded the man’s face, making it impossible to recognize him or verify his identity.

In response to a question, the man said he would not specify where bin Laden was hiding.

“Thanks be to God, he is absolutely fine,” he said.

Spain

Suspects arrested in terror recruitment case

Spanish police arrested 11 men Wednesday on charges of belonging to a Syrian-based network that recruited suicide bombers to attack U.S. troops in Iraq, officials said Wednesday in revealing a new facet of Spain’s role as an al-Qaida staging ground.

Five other people were detained a day earlier in connection with last year’s train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500, authorities said.

More than 500 heavily armed police staged pre-dawn raids in a half dozen cities to grab the 11 suspects allegedly part of a recruiting network that has ties to Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi’s terror group al-Qaida in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said.

Spain has had several brushes with al-Qaida, including the commuter train bombings on March 11, 2004 and militants’ alleged use of Spain to help organize the 9-11 attacks.