Spain press slams al Qaeda verdict

Associated Press | September 26, 2005

In the verdict Monday, Syrian-born businessman Imad Yarkas was convicted and sentenced to 27 years for leading an Islamic terror cell in Spain and conspiring to commit murder in connection with the September 11 attacks, in 2001. But the sentence was a tiny fraction of the nearly 75,000 years sought for him by prosecutors. (Full story)

Two other suspects charged as accessories to murder in the suicide airliner attacks were acquitted, although one was convicted of collaborating with a terrorist group.

At the trial, the chief state prosecutor had asked for "exemplary sentences" to show terror should be fought in court, not with Guantanamo-style detention camps.

"The only thing proven is Yarkas' conspiracy with the suicide terrorist" Mohamed Atta and other members of the Hamburg, Germany-based cell that staged the attacks, the sentence said, referring to the suspected leader of the September 11 suicide pilots.

The judges, however, said there was not enough evidence to convict the three main suspects as material participants in the September 11 plot.

Twenty-one other people also stood trial but on charges not directly related to September 11. Of those, 16 were convicted of belonging to or collaborating with a terrorist organization and five were acquitted.

The Barcelona daily La Vanguardia said, "The sentence, way below that sought by the state attorney, is a blow to the judicial investigation and the prosecution."

El Mundo said there was no doubt that most of those convicted "formed part of a group dedicated to making propaganda for the jihad, financing fundamentalist Islamic movements, recruiting fanatics for Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan and maintaining contacts with the Algerian GIA and other violent groups."

"But it is another thing to try to connect this group with the preparations for September 11, which was the basis for reopening this investigation at the end of October 2001," the paper added.

The paper said one problem was that the court's argument against Yarkas' role in September 11 rested on "two weak pieces of circumstantial evidence."

One was that his number was found in the phonebook of a person who had lived with Atta.

The other was a tapped phone conversation Yarkas allegedly had with a person called Shakur phoning from London two weeks before the 2001 attacks in which Shakur talks of "slashing the bird's throat" and entering "the aviation business."

"The National Court considers this a clear reference to the planes which crashed into the towers, something which continues to be a flight of fantasy for anyone with common sense and raises immense doubts about the seriousness of the verdict," El Mundo said.

Defense attorneys and lawyers for the Arab Commission for Human Rights described the case as a sham because of the lack of evidence. The prosecution, meanwhile, said it was satisfied with the verdict but may appeal.

Lawyers for most of the accused also indicated they would appeal although the attorney for Yarkas intimated his client may not as he felt he had little chance of getting a fair hearing.

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