Posted on 11/01/2007 3:30:30 PM PDT by blam
Men behind Madrid bombs laugh in court
By Fiona Govan in Madrid
Last Updated: 2:33am GMT 01/11/2007
A Spanish court yesterday convicted three men of murder over the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 passengers. The three received symbolic sentences of more than 40,000 years each but under Spanish law they will serve a maximum of 40 years.
Two Moroccans, Jamal Zougam, 33, and Otman el Gnaoui, 32, were convicted of carrying out the attacks on four commuter trains. A Spaniard, Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, 30, was found guilty of supplying the explosives.
Eighteen other people were convicted of lesser charges and received sentences ranging from three to 18 years. But seven defendants were cleared of all charges including one of the alleged masterminds, Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, 35, who is serving a prison sentence in Italy on unrelated terror offences.
The 28 defendants laughed inside the courtroom’s bullet-proof glass chamber shortly before the verdicts were delivered.
Verdict: Bombers who killed 191 people face justice
Shortly after 7.30am on Thursday March 11, 2004, ten bombs ripped through four trains packed with commuters and schoolchildren as they headed into the centre of Madrid.
The blasts tore gaping holes in the carriages and left hundreds of mutilated bodies, including young children and babies, lying in the wreckage at three of the capital's stations.
"Everything was normal and then in an instant the world was transformed," said Luisa Alvarez, a 50-year-old mother who was travelling to work with her son.
Both survived with minor injuries but the scenes they witnessed would leave a scar that will never heal.
"What we saw was horrific – heavy overcoats and clothes had just disintegrated off people. I saw men with tangled limbs and dead babies lying on the tracks. It was like walking through a war zone. We couldn't understand what was happening," she said.
"Across the aisle from us there was one man whose entire face had been burned away.
"Everywhere I turned there was blood. The windows were smashed and there was moaning and crying but I couldn't see where it was coming from."
Mrs Alvarez, a slightly built woman, still cannot remember how she and her son found their way out of the damaged carriage.
She was taken to hospital only to discover that another of her sons was injured when a bomb exploded simultaneously on a different train.
Survivors of one of the blasts fled their train to the apparent safety of a station platform, only to be hit by another explosion moments later. CCTV footage showed them scrambling to escape the second fireball.
The bombs, planted in rucksacks and triggered by mobile phones, killed 191 and left more than 1,800 injured in the biggest terrorist attack in mainland Europe.
Jamal Zougam (left), Rachid Aglif, Rafa Zouhier and Abdelilah El Fadoual laugh in court before the verdicts
The atrocity also changed the course of Spanish history by helping to bring down the conservative government of the day. In the immediate aftermath, prime minister Jose Maria Aznar blamed the attack on the armed Basque separatist group Eta, despite its denial and the mounting evidence that the perpetrators were inspired by Islamic jihad.
Police discovered a van with detonators and a tape-recording of verses from the Koran outside the station where the trains had departed. A video claiming the attacks for al-Qa'eda was found near a Madrid mosque.
With the bombs going off just three days before a general election, Spaniards became convinced that the attacks were a reprisal for their involvement in US-led invasion of Iraq.
After months of polls predicting Mr Aznar would win another term, the traumatised country voted in the Socialist opposition. Within three days of becoming prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero kept his pledge and brought the troops home.
The ensuing investigation into the attacks was plagued with controversy amid accusations that Spain's leading parties had put political quarrels above the need for the truth.
Many members of the conservative Popular Party have continued to insist that Eta was somehow behind the attacks, and that they were the victims of an undefined conspiracy to oust them from office.
That was finally laid to rest yesterday when the presiding judge in the trial declared that there was absolutely no evidence to suggest Eta had any involvement in the attacks.
The testimony of more than four months of hearings, in which 300 witnesses and 70 experts gave evidence, showed that the attacks were planned and carried out by a cell inspired by Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qa'eda.
Seven alleged ringleaders of the attacks, and those that are believed to have planted the bombs on the trains, never appeared in court.
They blew themselves up when police surrounded their Madrid flat three weeks after the attacks, killing one officer, and destroying vital evidence.
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.
Five of them came from the same suburb of Tetouan, a town in the foothills of Morocco's Rif mountains, which has proved a fertile recruiting ground for jihadists.
Another three suspects are still at large and one is believed to have died in a suicide attack in Iraq.
A mother who lost her former husband and youngest son in the attack said that she would never come to terms with what happened that day or understand what drove the perpetrators.
"Now my life is empty and I shed many tears," Isabel Casanova Ortega, 53, said yesterday. "Even after three years I feel sad, I feel pain and above all I feel anger about what they did.
"These terrorists are liars and cowards. If they hate the world or can't share it, why not just leave it without taking innocent people with them?
"They are assassins without scruples and they deserve the most severe punishment."
40,000 would not be enough.
“They are assassins without scruples and they deserve the most severe punishment.”
EU frowns upon the death penalty miss. It’s not tolerant of diversity.
Forty years? I’ll be surprised if they serve 40 months. Kidnap a few diplomats and the Euros will cave, does anyone doubt it?
Court finds 21 guilty of Madrid bombings (Mastermind acquitted)
Sadly, Europe will have to suffer many more heinous terrorist acts before they go crusader on islamofacist ass...
Western nations lack spine, including many here in the US. It only emboldens these f*king barbarians.
Of course they laughed. The whole world laughs at Spain’s fecklessness.
Imagine, for murdering multiple men, women and babies they can only serve 40 years. It’s as if injustice is written into the law before the trial even begins.
They are so, so fortunate I do not have anything to do with their sentence.
40,000 years in a Spanish prison is luxury compared to Eternity in Hell ....
What does one have to see to be convienced evil exist and if these secularistic, ignorant countries don't overcome it by doing the RIGHT thing, there will be no freedom, and only misery.
40 years should be a minimum sentence for these murderers!
I could fly to Spain tonight, slaughter a few dozen people in downtown Madrid with a shotgun, lob a few grenades into the stands of a “futbol” match killing a few dozen more, and then get into a running gun battle with the police killing several of them and then surrendering before they got to me. And I could still be out of jail in time to play with my grandkids. Wow.
Exactly!
After months of polls predicting Mr Aznar would win another term, the traumatised country voted in the Socialist opposition. Within three days of becoming prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero kept his pledge and brought the troops home.
There's your blueprint - an attack on US soil one news cycle before Nov. 4, 2008, and the "traumatised country" will vote in "the Socialist opposition".
Kidnap a Spaniard or two, threaten to cut off their heads on Terrorist TV, and all 3 get released. They are laughing, because they got the Euro weenies by the gonads.
In Denmark and some other Western European countries they are already discussing giving the Islamists enclaves governed by sharia. Unfortunately, many leftists here in the USA agree with those sentiments, so we will no doubt see a similar push for such a policy here.
I agree. How many people will have to die before people get a bellyfull and say, “wipe them out”, an and actually start to make them suffer.
The Spanish are cowards and appeasers. Sooner or later, they will get it again.
They must be using tiny, little eyebrow tweezers to get a good grip.
“The Spanish are cowards and appeasers.”
As much as I love Spain and the Spanish people, I have to agree that this is true of their stinking socialist leaders and many of their people. (and even our own filthy RINOs and democraps.)
“Sooner or later, they will get it again.”
Having lived in Spain for over 2 years, dated many a senorita and lifted many a “copita” with Spanish miltary officers, I can totally agree with your assessment.
I think a terrorist attack against Spain is coming that will make 3-11 and even 9-11 look like a picnic. Then, I believe, the traditional Spanish attitude will then take over. And the streets of Spain will run red with muslim blood.
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