MADRID, Spain – A Spanish judge issued the first indictments in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, charging 29 people Tuesday with murder, terrorism or other crimes after a probe that uncovered a hornet’s nest of Islamic militancy but no apparent link to al-Qaida.
In a minutely detailed indictment spanning 1,471 pages, Juan del Olmo, the investigative magistrate spearheading the probe, described the birth and workings of a cell of longtime residents, most of them from Morocco and Syria.
Inspired by extremist Islamic doctrine, they are said to have risen up against their adopted homeland to kill 191 people and wound more than 1,700 in the coordinated attacks.
Three of the 29 people indicted were charged with 191 counts of murder and 1,755 counts of attempted murder, and three others with conspiracy to commit those crimes.
The first three include Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan merchant who allegedly supplied cell phones used as detonators in the 10 backpack bombs that ripped through four crowded commuter trains on the morning of March 11, 2004. When he was arrested two days after the attacks, Zougam said he was in bed asleep when the bombs went off and had nothing to do with the plot. The indictment said four witnesses have identified Zougam as having been aboard trains that were bombed.
The other two are Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a Spaniard accused of supplying the dynamite used in the attacks, and Abdelmajid Bouchar, a Moroccan.
Rabei Osman, an Egyptian who has claimed the attacks were his idea, is among the three men accused of conspiracy to commit murder. He is on trial in Italy on separate terrorism-related charges.
Five of the six lead suspects also were charged with belonging to a terrorist organization, while 12 other men are accused of collaboration.
The indictment says the cell spent about $120,000 to stage the attacks and caused material damage and civil liability of more than $26 million.
It said the central figure in the financing, planning and execution of the attacks was a Moroccan named Jamal Ahmidan. He and six other alleged ringleaders – including its ideological mastermind, Tunisian Serhan Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet – blew themselves up three weeks after the massacre as police moved in on their apartment hideout in the Madrid suburb of Leganes. One policeman died in that explosion.
The cell financed itself within Spain. Officials turned up no evidence it received any outside money transfers to stage the attack, Del Olmo wrote.
A trial is not expected until next year. The suspects accused of murder probably will face jail terms of thousands of years if convicted, although they could be held in jail for only a maximum of 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.
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