Enlarge imageBy Ben Harding
MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish judge charged 29 people on Tuesday with murder or crimes related to the Madrid train bombings in a report which concluded that the Islamist group which planned the attack was inspired by al Qaeda.
Judge Juan Del Olmo’s report detailed evidence against the group ranging from its finances to telephone transcripts and also concluded that the bombers who killed 191 people and injured 2,000 others on packed commuter trains on March 11, 2004 were not directed by al Qaeda.
The report is the first official step in a process that will lead to one of Europe’s biggest terrorism trials. The defendants are mostly Spanish or Moroccan.
The judge charged five people with 191 counts of terrorist killings and 1,755 attempted murders, while 23 others were charged with several forms of collaboration like falsification of documents and membership of a terrorist group.
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Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a former miner accused of providing the plastic explosives which ripped open train carriages and tore limbs off victims, was charged with 192 murders, including the death of a policeman killed during a raid on suspected bombers a few weeks after the attacks.
During the raid, seven top suspects blew themselves up in an apartment block. Another fled Spain, but died fighting in Iraq.
Because of the number of people involved, the March 11 case may not make it to court until early next year and will likely take another year to complete, judicial sources have said.
Del Olmo’s report said the attacks were inspired by an Internet essay published by Global Islamic Media, which called for attacks on Spain before general elections in 2004 to try and force the country to pull out of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
"We do not believe the Spanish government will bear more than two or three attacks before popular pressure forces them to pull (their troops) out," a transcript of the essay said.
"We must make the most of the upcoming elections," it added.
NO ETA LINK
The bombs exploded three days before a general election and the then-ruling conservatives, the Partido Popular (PP), quickly blamed the blasts on Basque separatist group ETA.
As evidence mounted linking the bombs to Islamists and the Iraq war, some turned against the PP and voted in the Socialists -- who had promised to bring Spanish troops home.
Soon after taking power, they quickly fulfilled the pledge.
A court spokeswoman said there was no connection between the bombings and ETA, despite continued insistence by some right-wing politicians and media to make a link.
Del Olmo said the attacks "cost very little" and placed the total value of explosives, housing and mobile phones used to detonate the bombs at more than 54,271 euros (45,678 pounds). Much of that was probably paid in drugs rather than money, he added.
The bombs and the explosion during the police raid caused more than 22 million euros of damage.
The rationale behind the bombing appears to have parallels with attacks in London last July, where young suicide bombers devised their own plot, using information from radical militants via the Internet. They killed 52 people.
The March 11 case follows on from another Spanish trial against radical Islamists.
In September, a court convicted 18 people, accused mostly of belonging to or cooperating with al Qaeda, although the top three defendants were found not guilty of killing nearly 3,000 people in the September 11 attacks in the United States.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Hay)
