Survivors and relatives of those killed were shocked by what many saw as the lenient sentences handed down in the Madrid bombing trial.
Clara Escribano, who was traveling to work on the morning of March 11, 2004, when a bomb exploded on her train, said the verdict was a "great disappointment."
The 49-year old paediatric nurse underwent three operations and is deaf in one ear.
"I don't have the words to explain how I feel," she said.
Still unable to even walk past the station, she said she found it hard to believe that only Jamal Zougam and Othman el-Gnaoui were found guilty of carrying out the attacks.
"As the verdicts were read out, my stomach began to churn, and my heart beat faster," said Escribano, from the working class district of Santa Eugenia in Madrid.
"The worst moment was when Carmen Toros [the wife of Emilio Trashorras] was found not guilty. Her little smile ... it was a moment of great disappointment for the victims in the courtroom. I cannot believe that these other people will be out in the street in two days ... we have to accept the court's verdicts but at the moment I am feeling very bad," she said.
Angeles Pedraza, who lost her 25-year-old daughter in the train bombings, said that she still had not been able to take in all of the judgments, and "refused to accept" they are right. Pedraza had been hoping to find some kind of closure in the verdict, but said: "It all happened so quickly that I couldn't understand everything -- I couldn't hear some of the names being read out. Tonight I will have to sit down and have a think and tomorrow we shall carry on the fight."
Victims' associations have already stated that they intend to appeal against the sentences at the supreme court.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion