Three lead defendants in the 2004 Madrid train bombings were convicted of mass murder and other charges yesterday, 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. There was heavy security outside, including bomb-sniffing dogs and police helicopters.
The backpack bomb attacks killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800 on March 11, 2004.
The three lead suspects were each handed sentences that stretched into the tens of thousands of years. They include Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan convicted of placing at least one bomb on one of the trains, Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a Spaniard who is a former miner found guilty of supplying the explosives used in the attacks, and Osman Gnaoui, a Moroccan accused of being a right-hand man of the plot's operational chief.
conversation
But Rabei Osman, an Egyptian accused of helping orchestrate the attacks, was acquitted. Osman, who is in jail 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 accused masterminds -- 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. They received sentences between 12 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.
Most of the suspects are young Muslim men of North African origin who allegedly acted out of allegiance to al-Qaeda 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.
ETA
Bermudez said the probe had turned up no evidence of involvement by the Basque separatist group ETA, dismissing the initial argument of the conservative pro-US government in power at the time of the attacks. The theory is still embraced by many Spaniards.
The blasts targeting crowded, morning rush hour commuter trains traumatized Spain and arguably toppled its government -- the first time an administration that backed the US-led Iraq war was voted out of power.
That day of carnage, wailing sirens and cell phones going unanswered amid the wreckage of blackened, gutted trains is etched in Spain's collective memory and is now widely known as simply 11-M, much as the term 9/11 conjures up so much pain for Americans.
The sentences of thousands of years for lead suspects are largely symbolic because the maximum jail time for a terrorism conviction in Spain is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS