Islamists on trial for plan to attack Spanish court

dpa German Press Agency Published: Monday October 15, 2007

Madrid- A trial opened Monday at Spain's National Court of
30 suspected members or collaborators of an al-Qaeda-inspired network
charged with planning attacks against targets including the court
itself.
Prosecutors were seeking prison sentences ranging from 2.5 to 46
years for the accused, who were mainly of Moroccan and Algerian
origin.

Seven of the accused were charged with planning a suicide attack
against the National Court. They intended to load a truck with 500
kilos of explosives and to drive it at full speed against the court
building, according to prosecutors.

Other eventual targets included the Supreme Court, a Madrid
railway station and the headquarters of the conservative People's
Party (PP).

The trial had some links with that of 28 people charged with
involvement in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, at which one of the
accused appeared as a witness.

The network on trial, which called itself Martyrs for Morocco, was
dismantled in 2004.

It was allegedly headed by Abderrahman Tahiri, detained in
Switzerland under the name of Mohammed Achraf and extradited to
Spain, for whom prosecutors are seeking 46 years in prison.

Letters seized from prison inmates indicate that Tahiri started
building the network while in prison near Salamanca, spreading his
radical ideas to prisons elsewhere in Spain.

The network finally comprised four well-organized cells.

Achraf is suspected of tasking one of the other accused,
Mauritanian national Kamara Birahima Diadie, with acquiring a ton of
dynamite from a Spanish explosives trafficker for attacks against the
National Court and other targets.

The case has links with the Madrid train bombings, Europe's
biggest al-Qaeda-linked attack, which claimed 191 lives in March
2004.

Accused Abdelkrim Benesmail was earlier sentenced for belonging to
the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) together with Allekema Lamari,
one of the Madrid suspects who blew himself up with six others three
weeks after the train bombings. Benesmail appeared as a witness at
the Madrid bombings trial.

A protected witness has also supplied evidence for both trials.

The trial of the 30 started an hour late of schedule, because the
bullet-proof space in the court room turned out too small for all of
the accused. Ten of them had to face court outside of it.

The accused are charged with crimes such as conspiration to
attack, belonging to an armed group or falsifying documents. The
trial was expected to last about two months.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency

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