Spain waits for Madrid train bombs verdicts

Spain has put its security forces on full alert as it prepares for the verdict in Europe’s biggest Islamic terror trial.

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

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.

The top eight defendants each face 39,000-year sentences if convicted on all charges, although under Spanish law they could spend no more than 40 years behind bars.

Charges range from forgery to murder and conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack.

Seven suspected ringleaders in the case blew themselves up as police closed in on a Madrid apartment about three weeks after the attacks, and most of those left to stand trial were considered secondary figures.

A two-year investigation concluded the group was inspired by al-Qaida, but had no direct links to it, nor did it receive financing from Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation.

Unlike the September 11 attacks, which temporarily united Americans of all political stripes, the Madrid bombings tore Spanish society apart.

In elections three days after the blasts, voters elected the opposition Socialists and ousted a pro-US government that had sent 1,300 troops to Iraq.

Many Spaniards blamed that administration for the attack, saying it had made the country a target for terrorists by supporting the Iraq war. The Socialists quickly brought the troops home.

The trial proved equally divisive, with the conservative opposition using it to advance a host of conspiracy theories, including unsubstantiated allegations that Basque separatists were involved in the attack, or that members of the Socialist party somehow knew about it beforehand.

Most of the conspiracy theories were disproved by the court, with a conservative politician who was Spain’s police chief at the time of the attacks fined and threatened with jail for refusing to name his source when he testified that an internal police document linked ETA with the blasts.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez 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.

Angel Acebes, the deputy leader of the opposition Popular Party yesterday 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,” a reference to Zapatero’s victory after the March 11 attacks.

The trial also shed new light on the spectacular failure of Spanish intelligence in the days before the attack.

The prosecution said Spanish authorities were monitoring several of the alleged bombers in the months before March 11 – and stopped a car carrying several of the alleged plotters in late February. The prosecution said the car was leading a convoy of terrorists transporting the explosives used in the blasts, but the authorities were unaware of it.

Agents listening in to tapped phone conversations among the plotters believed something was being planned, but thought the coded language the men were using was referring to a drug deal.

Following the attacks, police have bolstered security and intelligence operations nationwide, tripling the number of agents concentrating on terrorism and putting blanket surveillance on 250 suspected radicals.

Spain plans fresh memorial services for the families of the bomb victims next week.