| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| Judge asks Spain to declassify papers in bomb trial |
| 2007-02-21 |
| A Spanish court hearing the Madrid train bomb trial asked the government on Monday to declassify papers in which one of the accused allegedly mentions contacts between a suspect and Basque separatist group ETA. When the bombs ripped through commuter trains on March 11, 2004, killing 191 people, the then-ruling conservative Popular Party blamed the blasts on ETA before a battery of evidence pinned the blame on a group of Islamist militants. Prosecutors have ruled out any link between the Islamists and ETA, which has killed more than 800 people in a four-decade fight for independence for the Basque Country in northern Spain and southwest France. However, some rightwing media and politicians still insist ETA had a role in the train bombings. The lead judge in the case, Javier Gomez Bermudez, asked the government to release documents from the national intelligence centre about a meeting agents had with Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, accused of supplying the bombers with dynamite. In that meeting, Trashorras said Jamal Ahmidan, who prosecutors say was one of the main people behind the bombs, had been in contact with various ETA prisoners, court sources said. Trashorras, a former miner, is accused of selling dynamite to Ahmidan, known as "El Chino" (The Chinaman) and faces the heftiest charges in the case, including terrorist murders. Ahmidan was one of seven suspects who blew themselves up in an apartment block weeks after the train bombings. Earlier this month, the government agreed to hand a judge papers about secret CIA flights that flew via Spain to transport terrorism suspects to third countries where investigators say they may have faced torture or abuse. When it declassified the papers on the "rendition" flights, the government said the judge should use the papers only for the investigation and treat the data with maximum protection, suggesting the information would not be made public. |
| Posted by:Fred |