April 22, 2005
The Associated Press
MSNBC
Photo: Fatima Hamed, right, the wife of Al-Jazeera journalist Tayssir Alony, one of the accused al-Qaida members on trial in Madrid, speaks to journalists outside the courthouse, on Friday. (Paul White / AP)
MADRID, Spain - Twenty-four Muslim men went on trial Friday as suspected members of an al-Qaida cell accused of using Spain as a staging ground to plot the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The defendants — mostly of Syrian and Moroccan origin — sat on wooden benches in a cramped, bullet-proof chamber at a makeshift courtroom as the trial before a three-judge panel got under way. The court clerk read out the names of the 24 defendants and the charges against them.
Spain is only the second country after Germany to try suspects in the suicide airliner attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Accused of providing logistical cover
The main suspect is Imad Yarkas, a 42-year-old father of six who, under the guise of being a used-car salesman, is alleged to have overseen a cell that provided logistical cover for Sept. 11 plotters like Mohamed Atta, believed to have piloted one of the two airliners that destroyed the World Trade Center.
Before the trial began, police with submachine guns stood guard as vans brought the handcuffed defendants to the courthouse, unloading them behind a tall iron fence and escorting them into the squat, red-brick building on the outskirts of Madrid, which has been specially adapted for the trial.
A police helicopter circled low overhead, and agents with bomb-sniffing German shepherd dogs searched shrubs in a park across the street.
Eight-year probe
The trial is the culmination of an eight-year investigation by anti-terrorism magistrate Baltasar Garzon, which determined that Muslim militants leading quiet lives as businessmen, laborers or waiters operated freely in Spain for years, allegedly recruiting men for terrorist training in Afghanistan, preaching holy war and laundering money for al-Qaida operations.
Two other suspects also are accused of planning the massacre. Moroccan Driss Chebli, 33, allegedly helped Yarkas arrange a July 2001 meeting in Spain attended by Atta and Sept. 11 coordinator Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Syrian-born Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, 39, made detailed video footage of the World Trade Center and other landmarks while visiting the United States in 1997.
Those tapes were eventually passed on to “operative members of al-Qaida and would become the preliminary information on the attacks against the Twin Towers,” Garzon wrote in a September 2003 indictment against the three men and 32 other suspects, including Osama bin Laden himself and other key members of al-Qaida.
The other 21 on trial are charged with terrorism offenses but are not directly linked to the Sept. 11 attacks.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7592085/