Court begins verdicts in Spain terror case

A Spanish court today convicted the first of 28 people accused of being involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings at the end of Europe’s biggest Islamic terror trial.

Judge Javier Gomez Bermudez began reading out the verdicts into the March 11 attacks in a hushed courtroom, with heavy security, including bomb-sniffing dogs, outside.

The backpack bombs, planted on commuter trains by al-Qaida terrorists at rush-hour killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800.

Most of the suspects are young Muslim men of North African origin who allegedly carried out the bombings as a response to Spanish troops being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The defendants, whose five-month trial ended in July, also include nine Spaniards, one a woman, charged with supplying stolen dynamite used in the string of explosions.

All 28 insisted they were innocent.