Court Delivers Guilty Verdict Over Madrid Train Bombings

A Spanish court today found the first of 28 defendants guilty of involvement in the Madrid train bombings that killed more than 190 people in one of Europe's worst terrorist atrocities in recent years.

Judge Javier Gomez Bermudez spent more than an hour summing up the case before delivering verdicts on each of the accused.

Earlier, the defendants were driven to the court on the outskirts of Madrid under high security as helicopters buzzed overhead and scores of police officers stood guard.

The verdicts and sentences were the culmination of nearly five months of testimony by hundreds of witnesses, arguments by more than 40 attorneys, and sporadic hunger strikes by several of the 28 defendants.

The group was accused of masterminding, carrying out or helping prepare the attacks on four packed commuter trains heading into Madrid from working-class neighborhoods during the morning rush hour of March 11 2004.

The blasts, from 10 backpacks filled with dynamite and nails, killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800 in Europe's worst terror attack since the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, which claimed 270 lives.

Prosecutors sought symbolic sentences of up to 38,976 years each for the eight lead defendants, including one Spaniard - 30 years for each of the people killed in the attacks, 18 years for each of the wounded, plus more time for other terrorism-related charges. But the most time anyone can spend in a Spanish jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.

Nine of the 28 defendants, including one woman, were Spaniards charged with supplying stolen dynamite used in the string of rapid-fire explosions. All 28 said they were innocent.

Three weeks after the bombings, seven of the alleged ringleaders blew themselves up as Spanish police surrounded the flat where they were hiding out.

Among the dead were Serhane Ben Abdelmajid, known as the Tunisian and the alleged mastermind of the plot, and Jamal Ahmidan, a hashish trafficker turned fundamentalist, nicknamed the Chinaman.

At least four suspects, including two who may have been central to the attack, have disappeared. One is understood to have died in a suicide attack in Iraq.

The figure who drew most attention at the trial was Rabei Osman, said to be the link between the Madrid bombers and other Islamist terrorist groups. Also known as the Egyptian, he was arrested in Milan in June 2004 after allegedly saying in wiretapped conversations that he planned the train bombings. Mr Osman claimed he had been mistranslated, and condemned the attacks during the trial.

Suspects accused of planting the bombs include Jamal Zougam and Abdelmajid Bouchar. The latter is said to have fled the flat in Leganés just before the alleged ringleaders killed themselves.

The events of 11-M, as the attacks are known in Spain, initially divided the country along political lines and decisively influenced political events. The bombings were carried out three days before a general election, in which the incumbent conservative Popular party (PP) of José María Aznar was defeated by the Spanish Socialist Workers party (PSOE), led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. It is argued that the bombers intended their attacks to force a change of government and the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, one of the PSOE's campaign pledges.

From the moment of the attacks, the PP argued that they were the work of the Basque separatist group Eta. Mr Aznar phoned newspaper editors, assuring them this was the case. Despite evidence soon emerging of a van containing detonators linked to the attacks and a recording of verses from the Qur'an, the PP stuck to its line. The Eta theory even reached court, with lawyers for those victims' associations supportive of the PP raising the idea of a connection between Islamist and Basque terrorism. No evidence of such a link was put forward.

Rogelio Alonso, a lecturer in politics and terrorism at King Juan Carlos University, said he believed the trial had shown that "it is possible to fight this type of [Islamist] terrorism through the courts". He also said the investigation had uncovered a link between the Madrid suspects and the wider world of al-Qaida.

However, Scott Atran, a US academic who has investigated the Hamburg cell connected to the September 11 2001 attacks in the US as well as those behind the Bali bomb attacks of 2002, and who witnessed the trial, said: "There isn't the slightest bit of evidence of any relationship with al-Qaida. We've been looking at it closely for years and we've been briefed by everybody under the sun ... and nothing connects them."

Mr Zapatero, said he hoped the verdict would "give a definitive answer to those who have put forth absurd and despicable doubts about March 11".

He asked both political parties to support the ruling and put the acrimony behind them. That call was unlikely to be heeded, however, particularly in the midst of a contentious campaign ahead of national elections due next March.

Angel Acebes, the second most senior member of the PP, this week accused the government of preparing to use the verdict to attack the conservatives.

"We have never used a terrorist attack for electoral gains," he said.

He added that the Socialist party "has done that and continues doing it", in a reference to Mr Zapatero's victory after the March 11 attacks.