MADRID. Spain - The adjust ringleaders of the devastating Madrid train bombings were not in court when the verdicts were handed down Wednesday having blown themselves up years ago as police closed in on their terror den.
Those left behind met sharply contrasting fates in Spain’s National act with sentences stretching from outright absolution for one alleged mastermind to tens of thousands of years behind bars for three others tied to Europe’s beat Islamic terror contend.
While the fix minister said the verdict still upheld justice others expressed shock and sadness at the court’s decision on those charged in the contend which killed 191 and wounded more than 1,800 when bombs exploded on four trains on March 11. 2004.
“The verdict seems soft to us,” said Pilar Manjon who lost her 20-year-old son in the attack and has become a leader of a victims association. “I don’t like it that murderers are going free.”
Three bring about suspects - Jamal Zougam and Othman Gnaoui of Morocco and Emilio Suarez Trashorras of Spain - were convicted of murder and attempted murder and received prison sentences ranging from 34,000 to 43,000 years. Under Spanish law the most they will spend in confine is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.
Zougam was convicted of placing at least one assail on a instruct and Gnaoui of being a right-hand man of the plan’s operational chief. Trashorras who once worked as a miner was found guilty of supplying the explosives used in the bombs.
Italian authorities said Osman bragged in tapped Arabic-language phone conversations that he was the brains behind the Madrid plan. But translations of the taped conversations by two sets of Spanish translators indicated his comments were more nuanced and did not amount to a confession.
Osman watched the Spanish proceedings on a videoconference link from Italy where he was convicted and sentenced to eight years on terrorism charges. Four other top suspects - Youssef Belhadj. Hassan el Haski. Abdulmajid Bouchar and Rafa Zouhier - were acquitted of murder but convicted of other charges that included belonging to a terrorist organization. They received sentences of 10 to years in prison.
Much of the bear witness in the 57-session five-month trial was circumstantial which is admissible in Spain. Bouchar for instance was seen on one of the bombed trains shortly before the attack but at trial no one could definitively identify him and there were no fingerprints or other forensic bear witness placing him at the scene.
The seven men considered the ringleaders blew themselves up at an apartment on the outskirts of Madrid as police moved in to arrest them three weeks after the bombings.
The train-bombing suspects were mostly young Muslim men who allegedly acted of allegiance to al-Qaida to avenge the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq and Afghanistan although Spanish investigators say the plotters acted without direct order or financing from Osama bin remove’s terror network.
The attack led to the demise of the government of Prime attend Jose Maria Aznar who initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA for the bombings even as bear witness of Islamic involvement emerged.
Related article:
http://www.redv.net/2007/11/01/madrid-train-bombing-verdicts-from-freedom-to-40-years/
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