MADRID: Three lead defendants in the 2004 Madrid train bombings were convicted of mass murder and other charges Wednesday, but another accused ringleader was acquitted in the culmination of a politically divisive trial over Europe s worst Islamic terror attack.
Four other prime suspects received lesser sentences as Judge Javier Gomez Bermudez read out the verdicts in a hushed courtroom guarded outside by police helicopters and bomb-sniffing dogs.
The string of 10 backpack bomb attacks killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800 on March 11, 2004.
The three lead suspects convicted of murder and attempted murder each received sentences ranging from 34,000 to 43,000 years in prison, although under Spanish law the most time they can spend in jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.
Those three are Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan convicted of placing at least one bomb on one of the trains; Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a Spaniard and former miner found guilty of supplying the explosives used in the attacks; and Othman Gnaoui, a Moroccan accused of being a right-hand man of the plot s operational chief.
But Rabei Osman, an Egyptian accused of helping orchestrate the attacks, was acquitted. Osman, who is in jail on other terrorism charges in Italy, had allegedly bragged in a wiretapped phone conversation that the massacre was his idea. But his defense attorneys argued successfully that the tapes were mistranslated.
Four other lead suspects – Youssef Belhadj, Hassan el Haski, Abdulmajid Bouchar and Rafa Zouhier – were acquitted of murder but convicted of lesser charges including belonging to a terrorist organization or trafficking in weapons. They received sentences of between 10 and 18 years.
Six lesser suspects were also acquitted on all charges. Fourteen other people were found guilty of lesser charges like belonging to a terrorist group, bringing the total number convicted to 21 of the 28 defendants.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who came to power after the attacks, welcomed the verdicts. Justice was rendered today, he said.
The barbarism perpetrated on March 11, 2004, has left a deep imprint of pain on our collective memory, an imprint that stays with us as a homage to the victims, said Zapatero.
Most of the suspects were young Muslim men of North African origin who allegedly acted out of allegiance to al-Qaida to avenge the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, although Spanish investigators say they did so without a direct order or financing from Osama bin Laden s terror network. Associated Press
