Sickening news :(

[JeepGirl]

not too happy with the deal....

 

[Reba]

...This is just wrong, wrong !!!!! 15 years Just wrong, man !!!!!

You're right. When this guy gets out of prison he will be only 47 years old (IF he stays in the whole time, which I have doubts). He will still be young enough to do a lot more terrorist damage. Does the judge think that this guy didn't kill enough people yet? Does he want to give him another opportunity to kill more people?

15 years for more than 3,000 deaths. That equals less than two days of prison for each death. TWO DAYS!

 

[Reba]

Three days after terror attacks killed 200 people in Madrid:

Spain: Poll triumph for Socialists

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- In a dramatic rebuff to the ruling conservative Popular Party, Spain's socialists have scored a stunning victory in national elections.

...Turnout was high at 76 percent with voters seeming to express anger with the government, accusing it of provoking the Madrid attacks by supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which most Spaniards opposed.

The election was thrown wide open by a reported al Qaeda claim that it was responsible for Thursday's Madrid train bombings to punish the government for supporting the Iraq war.

Polling booths opened amid claims that Aznar's government possibly withheld information from the public about who was behind the terror attack that killed 200 people and injured 1,500.

Ministers had initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA, but as evidence mounted of an Islamic link, officials were forced to revise this position.

...Interior Minister Angel Acebes said Sunday police would continue to hold five men -- three Moroccans and two Indians -- arrested on Saturday under anti-terrorist laws. One of the five men has been linked to the alleged ringleader of al Qaeda in Spain.

The Socialists, who had pledged to bring home Spanish troops from Iraq if they won Sunday, would benefit if al Qaeda or another Islamic group were found to be responsible because of their opposition to the war, analysts said.

CNN.com - Spain: Poll triumph for Socialists - Mar 15, 2004


Spain withdraws Iraq troops in 15 days

MADRID, April 18 (UPI) -- In one of his first acts as Spain's new prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero Sunday issued orders withdrawing all 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq.

The BBC reported Zapatero had ordered his newly appointed defense minister to "do what is necessary for the Spanish troops stationed in Iraq (to) return home in the shortest time possible."

...Zapatero, a Socialist, was voted into office within days of the terrorist railway bombings in Madrid. In ordering the troops to return, he said he could not ignore what he called the will of the Spanish people.

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040418-013408-5515r.htm

Update:

'Mastermind' Walks, 21 Guilty in 2004 Madrid Train Bombings

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

MADRID, Spain —
Twenty-one of 28 defendants were found guilty Wednesday in the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people during the busy morning rush hour, but one accused ringleader was acquitted in connection with Europe's worst Islamic terror attack.

Judge Javier Gomez Bermudez read the verdicts in a quiet courtroom as the defendants awaited their fates behind a bulletproof glass enclosure.

Bomb-sniffing dogs and police helicopters patrolled outside the Madrid court, where 21 were convicted of murder or lesser charges stemming from hard evidence of the backpack bomb attacks that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800 on March 11, 2004, as commuters swarmed the rail stations and trains at the peak of rush hour.

Three lead suspects each were handed sentences that stretched into the thousands of years, but Rabei Osman, an Egyptian accused of helping orchestrate the attacks, was acquitted. His lawyer had argued during the five-month-long trial that wiretapping evidence was questionable in suggesting Osman, who is in jail in Italy, had allegedly bragged in a phone conversation that the massacre was his idea.

Victims of the attacks said they were shocked and saddened by the court's decision, which they saw as far too lenient.

"The verdict seems soft to us," said Pilar Manjon, whose 20-year-old son was killed in the blasts and who has become a leader of a March 11 victims' association. "I don't like it that murderers are going free."

Three lead suspects — Jamal Zougam, Othman Gnaoui and Spaniard Emilio Suarez Trashorras — were convicted of murder and attempted murder and received sentences ranging from 34,000 to 43,000 years in prison, although under Spanish law the most time they can spend in jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.

Zougam and Gnaoui are both Moroccans, the first convicted of placing at least one bomb on one of the trains, and the latter of being a right-hand man of the plot's operational chief. Trashorras, a Spaniard, is a former miner found guilty of supplying the explosives used in the attacks.

An Italian appeals court on Monday upheld Osman's conviction there, but shaved two years off his prison term, sentencing him to eight years.

Osman watched the Spanish proceedings on a videoconference link from the Justice Palace in Milan. The Europa Press news agency reported that he broke down in tears and shouted "I've been absolved! I've been absolved!" following the Spanish verdict, citing journalists and other observers inside the court.

Four other top suspects — Youssef Belhadj, Hassan el Haski, Abdulmajid Bouchar and Rafa Zouhier — were acquitted of murder but convicted of lesser charges including belonging to a terrorist organization. They received sentences of between 10 and 18 years.

Fourteen other people were found guilty of lesser charges, such as belonging to a terrorist group, and six others accused of lesser crimes were acquitted.

Much of the evidence against the men was circumstantial. Bouchar, for instance, had been seen on one of the bombed trains shortly before the attack, but at trial no one could positively identify him and there were no fingerprints or other forensic evidence placing him at the scene.

A senior court official privy to the decision-making told The Associated Press following the verdict that the case against Osman was "flimsy," and that there was "no hard evidence" that Belhadj or Haski were masterminds. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Circumstantial evidence is admissible in Spanish court, but the judges may have avoided relying heavily upon it because of a number of high-profile terror cases that were overturned on appeal, including one involving a Spanish cell accused of involvement in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, said Fernando Reinares, until recently the chief counterterrorism adviser at the Interior Ministry.

He said the judges in the case used a narrow approach to the law and warned that Spanish courts would have to change their rules of evidence if the country was to defeat Islamic terrorism.

"Islamic terrorism ... leaves a different kind of footprint," said Reinares, now head of the terrorism studies program at the Elcano Royal Institute, a Madrid think-tank.

The trial was perhaps never going to bring the verdict some were looking for, since the seven men considered the true ringleaders of the March 11 attacks were not in the docks. They all blew themselves up at a safe house on the outskirts of Madrid as police moved in to arrest them three weeks after the massacre.

Three other men are still fugitives, though two of those are suspected of having later killed themselves in suicide attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

The March 11 suspects — both dead and alive — were mostly young Muslim men from a hodgepodge of different backgrounds who allegedly acted out of allegiance to al-Qaida to avenge the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, although Spanish investigators say they did so without a direct order or financing from Osama bin Laden's terror network.

Spanish authorities had been on the group's trail in the months before the attacks, but had failed to grasp what they were plotting, mistaking the coded language in tapped phone conversations as that of petty criminals arranging a drug deal.

The attacks will be forever etched in Spain's collective memory, much as Sept. 11 conjures up so much pain for Americans. March 11 — a day of hellish carnage, wailing sirens and cell phones going unanswered amid the wreckage of blackened, gutted trains — was Spain's worst tragedy since its civil war.

It also arguably toppled the government of then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA for the bombings, even as evidence of Islamic involvement emerged.

That led to charges of a cover-up to deflect attention away from Aznar's support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, one of the reasons the bombers gave for carrying out the attack. Aznar's Popular Party was voted out of power in elections three days after the bombings, and the victorious Socialists quickly brought the Spanish troops home.

...At least 12 others reportedly were involved in the attacks, seven of whom had a role in the planning stages and about five others who either fled to Iraq or were killed. At least two died in homicide bombings, FOX News' Greg Palkot reported from outside the courtroom as the verdicts were read.

FOXNews.com - 'Mastermind' Walks, 21 Guilty in 2004 Madrid Train Bombings - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

 

[Foxrac]

Oh, hate to say, it's other country, it can be doing on different thing than USA does and nothing would be similar to USA.

 

[Barbaro]

I've got a cousin and his Italian husband residing there for years. I disagree with the Spainard system and laws, but Spain is the sovereign and can do whatever they think is right for its society. They're going to have to deal with ETA for a long time.

A friend of mine from the art community went to Spain with her husband about two years ago for a vacation. She is a well known artist in her community in San Diego and wanted to go there to take some pictures and do lots of sketches for her future workshops and art shows. She and her husband got lost and happened to run into Syrians and asked them for the directions, but instead they got mugged. They took their documents, passports, and checks. They had to contact the US consulate to report it. They found out that the Syrians used their checks to buy gold. Disturbing.

I'm a Pastel Journal subscriber and have read Q&A articles in the Pastel magazine. According to this author, Maggie Price, "....A student of mine at a recent overseas workshop said she had little trouble taking her pastels through security because she tells officials the pastels are "chalk." Like most pastelists, I dislike the word chalk and never use it when referring to my beautifully-pigmented pastels. But to airport security personnel I'm happy to describe the materials in whatever way best conveys a lack of danger. On my return trip, I tried out the "chalks" theory on the Madrid airport security. They nodded, smiled, didn't open the bags, and we were cleared...."

It was published on April 2007. It is easy, isn't it?

 

[Dixie]

If people of different countries of residence were killed then you'd think this would go before an International Tribunal/Court at the Prague where all international killers and threats are tried and punished.

Accessory to murder here carries a life sentence without possibility of parole if Im correct, if not then at least it should.

What we need nowdays is some cowboy justice. Rapists, murders, and theives were routinely hanged in public squares across the country until some bleeding hearts deemed it cruel and unusual punishment despite the brutality of the crime and the loss of life.

Its sad seeing humans placing very little value on the human life. Like the story of a man mugged at a conveinence store. Instead of calling for help - teenagers and others are stepping over the bleeding and beaten man to enter the store while at least one person even took the time to stop and take a picture of him with their camera phone. Absolutely sickening society we live in today.

 

[Reba]

...Like most pastelists, I dislike the word chalk and never use it when referring to my beautifully-pigmented pastels....

At least you don't yet have to call them Crayolas. :P