SPAIN: Suspects of March 11 Madrid train bombings arrive at court for verdict

Those charged with planning, carrying out or assisting in the 2004 Madrid train bombing arrive at court to hear verdict among tighten security measures and high level of media attention. Several police vans transporting some of the 28 people accused of playing a role in the 2004 Madrid train bombing arrived at court on Wednesday (October 31), as a judge prepares to rule on the biggest case linked to an Al Qaeda attack in Europe. Ten bombs ripped through four commuter trains early on March 11, 2004. The Islamist bombings killed 191 people and injured 1,800 when mobile phones set off homemade bombs packed into sports bags. The bombings also reshaped Spanish politics as voters spurned a conservative government that at first blamed the blasts on Basque separatists ETA. Twenty-nine people, mostly Moroccans and Spaniards, have been tried for crimes ranging from masterminding the attack to stealing dynamite from a mine in northern Spain. One has since been cleared. In the four and a half month trial, the court heard how petty criminals met in fast food restaurants to plot the bombings. After a four month break to consider the evidence, Judge Javier Gomez Bermudez will call the court to sit at about 11 a.m. (1000 GMT) and read a summary of the trial. Then he will then announce which suspects have been found guilty or innocent and read out sentences. The eight main suspects face multiple sentences that could total 39,000 years for each, although such figures are academic because under Spanish law nobody can stay in prison for more than 40 years. All suspects have pleaded innocent and most are expected to appeal against their sentences. The verdicts will close another chapter on the bombings. But with a general election less than five months away, politicians and the media are still bickering about whether ETA was involved in the attack, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. The blasts hit three days before the last elections, which the governing centre-right Popular Party had looked set to win. The then government's insistence that ETA planted the bombs backfired when evidence piled up to show they were the work of radical Islamists and were linked to Spain's backing of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Days later, voters turned out en masse and brought in the Socialists, who quickly pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq.

ITN Source | October 31, 2007

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