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April 11, 2006
Spain: 29 Islamists Charged Over Madrid Train Bombings
News from the Guardian, the BBC, the Times and Expatica reports that today, a Spanish magistrate, Juan del Olmo, indicted 29 people on counts of murder, terrorism and other crimes.
We earlier described how, on the morning of Thursday, 11 March, 2004, commuters were going about their business at Madrid, aboard commuter trains, when a series of ten bombs triggered by cell-phones in rucksacks ripped in quick succession through four trains. 191 people were killed, and 1,500 were injured. Three other bombs failed to go off, and were destroyed in controlled detonations by police officers. A video of the blasts at Atocha station, Madrid's main terminal, can be found here.
When the incumbent government led by Jose Maria Aznar claimed the blasts were the work of ETA, the Basque nationalists, the public reacted. Three days later, the general election was lost to rank outsiders, the PSOE or Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, led by Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. One of the first actions of the new government was to withdraw the Spanish troops which had been sent to Iraq by Aznar.
Arrests soon followed, and on April 3, 2004, the suspected ringleader of the Madrid cell, a Tunisian named Sarhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet was with six associates in an apartment in Leganes, a Madrid suburb. Police gathered, ready to make an arrest, when a bomb was detonated from within the apartment, killing all inside, one policeman, and injuring 11 officers and 7 others.
Of the 29 charged today, six are accused on 191 counts of murder and 1,755 counts of attempted murder. The indictments were contained in a 1,460 page dossier. Of the 29 individuals charged, 9 are Spanish. Mostly, the Spanish suspects are accused of selling explosives, stolen from mining operations in Asturas, which were then sold to the Muslim terrorists.
So far, only one individual has been convicted in connection with the 2004 train blasts. A youth who was a 16-year old boy at the time of the explosions, whose name was legally suppressed, pleaded guilty to transporting explosives, and collaborating with a terrorist group. He had carried explosive materials from Astura in northern Spain. He was given six years' detention in a juvenile offenders' institute, and five years' subsequent probation.
Yesterday, Expatica announced that Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that Judge Juan del Olmo would today conclude that the accused were influenced by an Islamist website called Global Islamic Media, or GIM.
This website had carried exhortations to Muslims to carry out attacks against Spain prior to the 14 March election. El Pais claimed that two of the suspected ringleaders of the Madrid attacks, Jamal Ahmidan and Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, had accessed this website between September and December 2003.
The website had announced: "It is necessary to make the most use of the upcoming elections. We think the Spanish government will not be able to tolerate more than two attacks, three at the most, after which it will have to pull its troops out of Iraq."
The main ringleaders of the group were Fakhet (nicknamed "el Tunecino", or the Tunisian) and Ahmidan ("el Chino", or the Chinese), who were killed in the Leganes apartment blast.
The actual trial may not take place until next year. During this time, Senor del Olmio is expected to be able to gather more evidence and interview more witnesses. Already, 40 witnesses have given evidence. These are now under protection.
Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras (pictured top left), a former miner, who gave the bombers the plastic explosives, was today charged with 192 counts of murder, with the extra murder being that of the policeman killed in the Leganes apartment blast, Francisco Javier Torronteras.
Trashorras, a Spanish national, was arrested on 18 March 2004. It is alleged that he exchanged explosives for drugs and cash. His wife, Carmen Maria Tora Castro, the only woman among those indicted, is charged with trafficking explosives. The other five individuals charged with multiple murder are all of north African origin.
Moroccan-born Jamal Zougam (pictured left) is accused on 191 counts of murder, 1,755 counts of attempted murder, stealing a vehicle, belonging to a terrorist organisation and four counts of carrying out terrorist attacks. Three people had testified to witnessing him leaving a rucksack aboard one of the trains on 11 March. One witness described him as "the person who placed a dark blue sports bag under his seat."
Zougam was arrested two days after the blasts, on Saturday 13 March, 2004. He is a merchant, who is thought to have supplied the cell phones which were used as detonators in the train attacks.
He is said to have been under Spanish police surveillance since a series of blasts which took place in Casablanca, Morocco, in 2003.
Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, nicknamed "the Egyptian" (pictured right), was arrested on 8 June 2004 in Italy. He had been tracked by a joint anti-terror operation mounted by Italy, Spain, France and Belgium. He was extradited in December that year back to Spain. He returned to Italy in 2005. He is thought by some authorities to be leader of the Egyptian wing of al-Qaeda. He is charged with 191 murders, and 1,755 attempted murders.
Youssef Belhadj, nicknamed "the Moroccan", was arrested on 1 February 2005 in Belgium. He was extradited from there to Spain. Again he is charged with 191 murders and 1,755 attempted murders. He is assumed to be a member of the Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain (GICM), a group associated with al-Qaeda, which is responsible for the Casablanca bombings, which took place on 16 May 2003 and killed 45 people. As we reported earlier, he was tried in absentia in Belgium in November last year, accused of belonging to GICM. He is further believed to be Aby Dujanah, an individual claiming to be an "al-Qaeda in Europe" spokesman, who appeared in a video shortly after the Madrid blasts, claiming responsibility for the attacks.
Hasan el Haski, a Moroccan who is believed to be a leading member of GICM, is said to have been involved in the 2003 attacks at Cassablanca. Detained in the Canary islands on 11 December 2004, he is charged with 191 murders and 1,755 attempted murders.
Abdelmajid Bouchar (pictured left), was arrested in Belgrade's main railway station in June last year. With no documents, he claimed to be an Iraqi migrant worker. He is said to have fled from the apartment in Leganes before it blew up, and is charged with 191 counts of murder and 1,755 counts of attempted murder.
According to the The Times:
The suspects accused of murder will probably face jail terms of thousands of years if convicted, although they could only be held in jail for a maximum of 40. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment although Spanish prosecutors routinely request symbolically long jail terms in terrorism cases.More than a hundred people have been arrested in the course of the investigations.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at April 11, 2006 7:49 PM
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