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21 guilty in Madrid train terror

Seven others were acquitted, angering victims' families.

By TIMES WIRES
Published November 1, 2007

MADRID - A Spanish court Wednesday convicted 21 men in the 2004 bombings of Madrid's train system, the deadliest terror attack in the country's history, but acquitted an Egyptian national whom authorities once touted as the mastermind.

The National Court convicted the three main suspects of mass murder and sentenced them to tens of thousands of years in prison for Europe's worst Islamic terror attack.

The mixed verdicts for 28 defendants, contained in a 700-page ruling and read in a heavily guarded courtroom on the outskirts of Madrid, capped a case that exposed the workings of Islamic terror networks in the heart of Europe and foreshadowed other attacks that would follow in London and elsewhere.

A total of 191 people were killed and nearly 2,000 injured when bombs hidden in backpacks ripped through four commuter trains during the morning rush hour March 11, 2004.

The investigation revealed a "franchise" of militants who were inspired by al-Qaida but who originated in northern Africa and had lived and worked in Spain for years.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero welcomed Wednesday's 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."

The trial, which started in February, has reminded Spaniards of their continued vulnerability to attack. The proceedings were used as a political lightning rod in a bitter fight between the leftist government, elected just days after the bombings, and the right-wing party that lost power.

The three lead suspects - Jamal Zougam, 34, and Othman Gnaoui, 32, of Morocco and Emilio Suarez Trashorras, 30, 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 jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.

Zougam, was convicted of placing at least one bomb on a train and Gnaoui of being a right-hand man of the plot's operational chief. Trashorras, who once worked as a miner, was found guilty of supplying the explosives used in the bombs.

Eighteen other defendants were found guilty of serious but lesser charges, including membership in an armed terrorist organization. The rest were acquitted.

A gasp went up in the courthouse, packed with survivors of the bombings, families of the dead and scores of journalists, when some of the acquittals were read. Several relatives said later they were furious and disappointed.

One of the biggest surprises was the acquittal of Rabei Osman, an Egyptian already convicted and jailed in Italy for the Madrid bombings. Italian authorities said Osman bragged in taped Arabic-language phone conversations that he was the brains behind the Madrid plot. But translations of the conversations by two sets of Spanish translators indicated his comments were more nuanced and did not amount to a confession.

The Spanish verdict came just two days after an Italian appeals court upheld Osman's conviction there.

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 18 years in prison. Fourteen other defendants were found guilty of lesser crimes and six others were acquitted.

Little solid evidence

Much of the evidence in the 57-session, five-month trial was circumstantial. 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 evidence placing him at the scene.

Circumstantial evidence is admissible in Spanish trials. But the judges may have avoided relying heavily upon it because of a number of high-profile terror cases that were overturned on appeal, including one involving a Spanish cell accused of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, said Fernando Reinares, until recently chief counterterrorism adviser at the Interior Ministry.

The trial was perhaps never going to produce the verdict some were looking for, since the seven men considered the true ringleaders of the 2004 attack were not in the dock.

They blew themselves up at an apartment on the outskirts of Madrid as police moved in to arrest them three weeks after the bombings.

Three other men are still fugitives, though two are suspected of having died in suicide attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

The attack will be forever etched in Spain's collective memory, much as Sept. 11 conjures up so much pain for Americans. March 11 - a day of hellish carnage, wailing sirens and cell phones going unanswered amid the wreckage of blackened, gutted trains - was Spain's worst tragedy since its civil war.

Information from the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified November 1, 2007, 00:26:09]