18 Al Qaeda Suspects Are Convicted in Spanish Trial

Concluding Europe’s largest trial to date of alleged Al Qaeda militants, a Spanish tribunal Monday convicted 18 Muslim immigrants of terrorism-related charges, among them a purported ringleader found guilty of conspiring to plan the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

It was a rare conviction of anyone associated with the 2001 assault on New York and the Pentagon. But in a stinging blow to efforts here and abroad to prosecute terrorism cases, the court dismissed the most serious charges before it: that three of the defendants were accomplices to murder in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Among those convicted was the Al Jazeera television correspondent in Spain, who was sentenced to seven years in prison. Six of the 24 defendants were acquitted of all charges.

The “mega-trial,” as it was known in Spain partly because of the number of defendants and its potential reach, was seen as an important test of the ability of a democracy to investigate alleged Islamic terrorists in its midst and bring them to justice without sacrificing civil rights. The results are mixed.

Chief prosecutor Eduardo Fungairino said Monday’s convictions confirmed the Spanish judiciary’s contention that it was better to fight terrorism through the legal system than through “wars and detention camps.” Still, the penalties handed down Monday for many of the defendants fell far short of what prosecutors had sought.

Only three of the defendants were accused of being accomplices to the Sept. 11 attacks, and prosecutors asked that each of them be given sentences of 74,000 years -- 25 years for each of the nearly 3,000 people killed. The court threw out those charges, citing lack of evidence.

Instead, the key defendant, Syrian-born Spaniard Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for his contacts with Mohamed Atta, one of the men who piloted a hijacked airliner into the World Trade Center.

Barakat had been accused of arranging a meeting near the Spanish city of Tarragona in July 2001 where Atta is believed to have finalized his plans to attack New York and government sites in and around Washington. Prosecutors said Barakat’s phone number had turned up in Atta’s apartment in Germany, and they alleged that Barakat was overheard speaking in code to a militant in London about the attacks 15 days before Sept. 11.

The court ruled that Barakat “was aware of the sinister plans of imminent execution.”

Barakat also was found to be the head of an Al Qaeda cell in Spain dedicated to promoting worldwide jihad, or holy war, and recruiting young European Muslims for the cause. Like all the defendants in the trial, he maintained his innocence.

The court sentenced Barakat to 15 years for the conspiracy role and an additional 12 years for leading a terrorist group.

One of the other men accused of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, Moroccan-born Driss Chebli, was cleared of the murder-related charges and instead will be jailed for six years for collaborating with a terrorist group.

The third man accused of being an accomplice to murder, Ghasoub Abrash Ghalyoun, was acquitted of all charges. Ghalyoun, a Syrian-born Spaniard, had been accused of making a videotape of sites including the World Trade Center to target them for attack. He contended that it was a video of his vacation. The tape showed him and his friends mugging for the camera and saying “cheese” while visiting sites in the U.S.

The other convicted defendants received sentences from six to 11 years for collaborating with or belonging to a terrorist group.

The verdicts, contained in a 445-page judgment, were read out on live television at a special court on the outskirts of Madrid under heavy security. It was there that the trial was held for nearly three months over the summer, after years of investigation. The three-member tribunal heard more than 100 witnesses and reviewed 100,000 pages of evidence.

Although the case predated the Madrid train bombings in 2004 that killed nearly 200 people, authorities have linked Barakat to several plotters of those attacks. Officials have said that a victory in the current case could facilitate the upcoming prosecution of about 100 suspects in the Madrid attacks.

Spanish law enforcement officials said the trial ending Monday marked significant progress by demonstrating the ability of a court to try suspects for crimes committed in other nations. But the effect on the fight against terrorism, one senior official said, would be minimal.

“These people are grains of sand in a mountain,” the official said of the defendants. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of his sensitive position in counter-terrorism duties.

In addition, the failure of prosecutors to secure wider convictions calls into question the somewhat unwieldy indictments issued by flamboyant investigating Judge Baltasar Garzon, a self-styled crusading magistrate whose inquiry launched the trail. His investigations have frequently been criticized as overreaching, and he has rarely secured a major conviction.

The court Monday also ruled as inadmissible most evidence based on wiretaps, a central tool of police investigations here and in other European countries.

Juan Aviles, who heads a think tank specializing in domestic security at Madrid’s Rey Juan Carlos University, said difficulties in proving a case against Al Qaeda suspects were to be expected, given the group’s diffuse and disjointed nature.

“This [trial] has demonstrated that there was an Al Qaeda cell in Spain and that the rule of law can be used to combat terrorism,” he said. “This can be considered as the first major legal proceeding against Al Qaeda in Europe, and from it there are a ... number of condemned men. That is important.”

Among those convicted Monday was journalist Taysir Alouni, a correspondent for the Arab satellite station Al Jazeera, who gained fame by broadcasting the first interview with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, from Afghanistan, after Sept. 11.

Prosecutors alleged that during trips to Afghanistan, Alouni acted as a courier and that he had repeated contacts with suspected terrorists. He said his trips were part of his job.

Alouni, who was born in Syria and has lived and worked in Spain for years, was convicted of ferrying money to Al Qaeda operatives. He was sentenced to seven years.

His boss, Al Jazeera news editor Ahmed Sheikh, said in an interview with his channel that the conviction marked “a black day for Spanish justice.” He later told CNN that although Al Jazeera respected the Spanish system, the prosecution of Alouni was a politically motivated, unfair judgment based on circumstantial evidence. Alouni will appeal, Sheikh said.

In a statement, Al Jazeera said it “views the incident as a dangerous precedent for the profession of journalism and journalists across the world who go to great lengths ... to bring coverage on critical issues.”

As for the main defendant, Barakat, his attorney said he might not bother to appeal because he believed the court was stacked against his client.

“What happened here today is shameful,” the attorney, Jacobo Teijelo, said outside the courtroom. He said that whether the punishment was 27 years or 74,000 years, it was essentially a life sentence for the 42-year-old father of six.

Times staff writer Wilkinson reported from Rome and special correspondent Mateo-Yanguas from Madrid.