The trial of 28 men charged in the 2004 Madrid terror attacks ended on Monday with victim groups clamoring for justice, suspects maintaining their innocence and the defense demanding acquittals.
The defendants are accused of train bombings that killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800 on March 11, 2004.
Verdicts in the trial, which began Feb. 15 at a high-security Madrid courthouse, were scheduled for mid-October.
"I ask you for a fair sentence, and in the case of Rabei Osman, a judgment of acquittal," defense lawyer Endika Zulueta said in his closing arguments on the last day of the trial. Osman is accused of being one of the masterminds of the attacks.
Zulueta said Osman could not be convicted on the basis of what he called unprovable claims and distorted facts which were used to present his client as a radical, extremist person and a terrorist.
"Based on nothing, and with an astounding frivolousness, they ask for a jail term of 40,000 years," he said while Osman was seen listening to his lawyer's comment through headphones.
Italian police arrested Osman in Milan, Italy, in June 2004. The main evidence against him was wiretapped conversations in which Osman allegedly tells an associate in Italy the attacks were his idea. He has repeatedly denied it was his voice in the calls.
The lawyer for Moroccan Jamal Zougam, accused of planting some of the bombs, said his client had nothing to do with the attacks and dismissed witnesses' accounts that he had been on the train.
"There is no trace of Jamal Zougam in any of the places [linked to the bombings], neither genetically nor visually," defense lawyer Jose Luis Abascal said.
He added that his defendant, who ran a shop that sold most of the cell phone cards used to set off the bombs, was made the scapegoat in the aftermath of the bombings because he was one of the first suspects to be identified publicly.
"His was the photo of the official culprit. He was the scapegoat that was offered to all of us," Abascal said.
All the defendants were given the chance to make a final statement and most of them made use of it, including Osman and Zougam, saying they were innocent and asking for justice. Some of them also condemned terrorism on the last day of the trial.
Zougam said that he "had already served three years in prison due to witnesses' lies."
"I don't know who did it, if it was the work of Islamists, probably it was, but I didn't do it," Zougam told the court reading from a handful of handwritten notes.
"I'm innocent of the March 11 bombings and of any terrorist attack," said Moroccan Hassan Haski, who prosecutors say was the leader in Spain of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, a militant organization who officials say has links to several of the alleged attackers.
The prosecution is seeking prison terms of nearly 39,000 years each for eight prime suspects if convicted of mass murder and the attempted murder of 1,841 people who were injured. However, under Spanish law, the maximum time they could serve on a terrorism conviction is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.
The other defendants face far shorter sentences if convicted on lesser charges such as membership of or collaboration with a terrorist group.
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