The leader of an al-Qaeda cell in Madrid yesterday became only the second person anywhere to be jailed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the US when he received a 27-year sentence for conspiracy to carry out terrorist murders.
Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, 41, who was born in Syria, was one of 14 people found guilty of belonging to the terrorist group in Europe's biggest al-Qaeda trial. The court also sentenced an al-Jazeera TV war correspondent, Tayssir Alouni, to seven years in jail for collaborating with al-Qaeda by acting as a financial courier.
Yarkas had conspired with "suicide terrorist" Mohammed Atta and other members of the Hamburg-based cell which carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, the 450-page judgment said.
Monday's sentences were, however, considerably lower than those demanded by prosecutors. They had called for Yarkas and two others to receive total jail sentences in excess of 74,000 years for almost 2,973 murder charges related to the Sept. 11 attacks. A panel of three judges, who threw out much of the phone-tap evidence in the case, cleared one defendant, Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, of charges he had filmed the Twin Towers in New York and other potential targets for al-Qaeda on a 1997 trip around the US.
The third man accused of taking part in the Sept. 11 conspiracy, Driss Chebli, was also cleared of those charges but was given a separate seven-year sentence for collaborating with al-Qaeda. Yarkas and two other men, Ousama Darra and Jasem Mahboule, were found guilty of having command roles within the terrorist group. Eleven further men, mainly of Syrian or Moroccan origin, were considered to be ordinary al-Qaeda members.
Al-Jazeera said it would continue to back Alouni as he appealed against his conviction.
He had admitted handing over some US$4,000 to an alleged al-Qaeda official in Kabul, but denied the money was for terrorism.
"He has been found guilty of doing his job," his wife, Fatima Hamed, said outside the court.
A Frenchman, Zacarias Moussaoui, is the only other person in jail for Sept. 11-related crimes, having admitted conspiracy in a US court in April after being arrested in August 2001. He will be sentenced next year.
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