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Rubira seeks 74,000 year sentences for Spanish al-Qaeda
A prosecutor said Monday he will seek prison terms of more than 74,000 years for each of three suspected al-Qaida members charged with using Spain as a staging ground for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. A trial is expected to start in mid-March, the National Court said. Spain will be only the second country worldwide to put Sept. 11 suspects on trial, after Germany.Prosecutor Pedro Rubira said that for each suspect, he will seek 25 years in prison for each of the 2,973 people killed in the suicide airliner attacks, for a possible sentence of more than 74,000 years. Under Spanish law, however, the maximum prison term someone can actually serve in a terrorism case is 40 years; the country has no death penalty or life imprisonment. Rubira also said he wants the defendants to pay a total of $1.16 billion in damages to victims' families. Imad Yarkas is accused of leading a Spain-based al-Qaida cell; accused as accomplices are Driss Chebli and Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun. Chebli is Moroccan while the other two are of Syrian origin. Another 21 suspected al-Qaida members in Spain accused of belonging to a terrorist organization and other offenses - not with helping plan the attacks - are expected to stand trial along with the three facing more serious charges. The other defendants include Al-Jazeera journalist Tayssir Alouny, for whom the prosecutor is seeking nine years in prison, and Yusuf Galan, a Spanish convert to Islam who faces a sentence of 18 years. The case stems from an indictment issued in September 2003 by Spain's leading anti-terrorism judge, Baltasar Garzon, against 35 people, later broadened to 40. Garzon charged that Yarkas, a used-car salesman, provided financing and logistics for key Sept. 11 plotters. In the indictment, Garzon wrote that "it has become crystal clear" that Yarkas "had links to some of the perpetrators of the massacre." In a 200-page writ, Rubira said his evidence includes more than 100 wiretapped conversations among suspected cell members. He also wants to call as a witness Jamal Zougam, a jailed Moroccan suspect the Madrid train bombings last March. Zougam, accused of placing some of the 10 backpack bombs that killed 191 people in Madrid, was a close follower of Yarkas, according to court records. Investigators on both sides of the Atlantic say that Spain - along with Germany - was a key staging ground for Sept. 11. In July 2001, Mohamed Atta - believed to have piloted one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center - attended a meeting in the northeastern Tarragona region of Spain that Garzon said was used to plan last-minute details such as the date of the attack. The 24 who will stand trial are in Spanish custody. The rest of those indicted by Garzon are either fugitives, such as Osama bin Laden himself, or in custody in other countries. Such is the case of Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni suspected of being a key contact person with bin Laden's terror network for an al-Qaida cell based in Hamburg, Germany. He was arrested on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in Pakistan and is now in secret U.S. custody. Those not in Spanish custody cannot be tried in absentia because the charge is terrorism. In Spain, such trials are held only for lesser offenses. Many of those in custody in Spain were arrested in November 2001. Germany is retrying the first person to be convicted in a Sept. 11 case. Mounir el Motassadeq, a Moroccan, was convicted in 2003 of aiding the Hamburg al-Qaida cell that included Atta and two other hijackers. A federal court overturned el Motassadeq's original conviction and 15-year prison sentence, ruling that he had been unfairly denied testimony by key al-Qaida suspects in U.S. custody. The only person charged publicly in the United States over Sept. 11 is Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen accused of conspiracy to commit terrorism. No trial date has been set. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-02-15 |
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