Spain braces itself for Madrid bombing verdicts

SPAIN’S security forces are on full alert as it prepares for the verdict in Europe’s biggest Islamic terror trial.

The result is due today on charges faced by 28 people over the Madrid commuter train bombings on March 11, 2004, which killed 191 people and injured 1,800.

A three-judge panel will read out verdicts and sentences, following nearly five months of evidence by hundreds of witnesses, arguments by more than 40 lawyers, and hunger strikes by several of the defendants who are mostly young Muslim men of North African origin accused of belonging to al-Qaida.