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Briefs

Spain convicts conspirator in Sept. 11 attacks

By wire services
Published September 27, 2005

MADRID - Syrian-born Imad Yarkas was sentenced to 27 years in prison Monday after being convicted of leading a terrorist cell and conspiring to commit murder in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. A Spanish court cleared him of a more serious charge in Europe's biggest trial of suspected al-Qaida members.

Driss Chebli, accused of helping one of the hijackers set up a key meeting, was acquitted of being an accessory to murder but was convicted of collaborating with a terrorist group and sentenced to six years.

Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, who faced Sept. 11 charges over video he shot of the World Trade Center and other U.S. landmarks, was cleared of all charges.

Yarkas, Chebli and Ghalyoun had been charged as accessories to mass murder and could have faced sentences of more than 74,000 years each - 25 years for each of the 2,973 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Prosecutor Pedro Rubira had asked for what he called "exemplary sentences" to show terror could be fought in court, not with Guantanamo-style detention camps.

Yarkas led a cell that raised money and recruited men for Osama bin Laden's terror group and "turned itself over completely to fulfilling the sinister designs decided by al-Qaida," according to the National Court.

But, it said, "the only thing proven is Yarkas' conspiracy with the suicide terrorist" Mohamed Atta and other members of the al-Qaida cell based in Hamburg, Germany, that carried out the attacks.

Twenty-one other people also stood trial for charges not directly related to Sept. 11. Of those, 16 were convicted of belonging to or collaborating with a terrorist organization and five were acquitted.

Elsewhere ...

TYPHOON IN CHINA: Typhoon Damrey slammed into southern China's resort island of Hainan on Monday, killing at least nine people, collapsing houses and sweeping away rice, rubber and banana crops. Packing winds of up to 125 mph, Damrey made landfall north of Hainan's Wanning City before dawn, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It was the island's strongest typhoon since 1973, the agency said.

EARTHQUAKE IN PERU: A powerful earthquake in northern Peru killed at least one person, destroyed about 100 homes and disrupted electricity and telephone service in much of the region, the civil defense chief said Monday. The 7.5-magnitude earthquake, centered northeast of the jungle city of Moyobamba, was felt throughout Peru's northern coast and more than 700 miles away in Bogota, Colombia, and broke windows in towns in Ecuador.

OPIUM IN AFGHANISTAN: Afghanistan could reduce its destabilizing heroin trade by licensing an opium crop to produce medical morphine for export, the Senlis Council, a drug policy group, said Monday, but the United Nations dismissed the idea as unlikely to work and the Afghan government called it premature.

[Last modified September 27, 2005, 02:45:31]