Court considers verdict in Madrid train bomb trial
Source: Reuters
By Jason Webb MADRID, July 2 (Reuters) - A Spanish court finished hearing testimony on Monday and will now consider verdicts in the trial of 28 men charged with Islamist train bombings in Madrid which killed 191 people in 2004. After four months and 17 days of evidence about the deadliest attack linked to al Qaeda in Europe, judges were expected to announce verdicts in October, court sources said. As the hearing of testimony drew to a close, seven Spanish tourists were killed in a bomb attack in Yemen, which authorities there said could also be linked to al Qaeda. The accused, mainly Arabs living in Spain but also several Spaniards, are accused of aiding, planning or carrying out the near-simultaneous bombings of four packed commuter trains arriving in central Madrid from working class suburbs on the morning of March 11, 2004. All deny involvement. "I have nothing to do with March 11 and for that reason I ask you for justice ... There is not one piece of evidence that proves that I have anything to do with this terrible event," said Jamal Zougham, one of those accused of carrying out the attack. He has spent the past four months sitting with other suspects sitting in a bullet-proof glass box in the court set in Madrid parkland. Prosecutors say the attack was carried out by a group linked to al Qaeda, with help from local petty criminals who supplied dynamite stolen from mines in northern Spain. They have asked for sentences of up to tens of thousands of years, although the maximum any individual can serve in Spain is 40 years. One of the Madrid bombings' alleged masterminds, known as "Mohamed the Egyptian", told the court he condemned the attacks, while media coverage in Spain has been dominated by speculation that ETA Basque rebels somehow participated. The furious argument over ETA involvement has raged since soon after the bombings, when Spain's then conservative government initially blamed the Basque separatists. Days later, it lost elections to the Socialists, who immediately fulfilled an election pledge by pulling Spanish troops out of Iraq. State prosecutors say the bombers acted on a call by Osama bin Laden to attack countries backing the U.S.-led war in Iraq. One man out of 29 originally charged has been acquitted. Other suspects were never brought to trial. Several escaped and seven blew themselves up in a suburban Madrid flat while surrounded by police on April 3, 2004. A police officer was also killed in the blast.
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