MADRID, April 22 -- After an eight-year investigation, Spanish prosecutors opened Europe's biggest trial of al Qaeda suspects on Friday in a case that includes three defendants accused of playing a supporting role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Spanish authorities imposed extra security for the trial, including a retrofitted courthouse designed especially for terrorism cases. Police helicopters and guards with machine guns patrolled the grounds. Inside the courtroom, all but one of the two-dozen defendants sat on benches inside a large bulletproof-glass cage that isolated them from their lawyers, prosecutors and the three-judge panel hearing the case.
Suspected al Qaeda members sit behind a glass screen in a converted trade fair pavilion in Madrid which now serves as a Spanish courthouse.
(Sergio Barrenechea - AP Pool Photo)
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Prosecutors say the suspects were part of a Spain-based cell of al Qaeda followers who raised money and recruited fighters for radical Islamic causes in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Indonesia. Most face charges of financing terrorism and belonging to a terrorist organization, but three are specifically accused of assisting two of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 attacks by organizing a rendezvous in a Spanish coastal town two months prior to the hijackings.
Spanish investigators amassed 300 boxes of evidence and an estimated 100,000 pages of documents, which were stacked along one wall in the courtroom. Much of the evidence in the case is circumstantial, and each defendant has asserted his innocence.
The challenges facing prosecutors became apparent during questioning of the first witness, Luis Jose Galan, a Spanish convert to Islam who faces up to 18 years in prison for allegedly belonging to al Qaeda and possessing weapons illegally.
In a feisty exchange with the lead prosecutors and presiding judge, Galan acknowledged owning guns and said he knew most of the other defendants. But he said he had legal permits for his weapons and had merely met his fellow suspects at a mosque, insisting that none of his conduct had been illegal.
Galan parried questions about a trip he took to Indonesia in the summer of 2001, shortly after the alleged leader of the cell, Imad Barakat Yarkas, had visited the country in what prosecutors charge was part of a recruiting network for fighters. While acknowledging that he traveled to Indonesia to pursue "business opportunities," he said was unable to recall many other details, including how he got there, how long he stayed and which parts of the country he visited.
"I'm not very good with dates, but you have 300 volumes of paperwork over there, I'm sure you could find out when I went," he snapped at the lead prosecutor, Pedro Rubira.
When prosecutors asked him if he thought Yarkas, the alleged ringleader, had "radical" beliefs, Galan rolled his eyes in disdain and suggested that the judge rule the question as inappropriate. "Judge, please, I'm having difficulty here," he said. "The term 'radical,' what does that mean?"
Yarkas is scheduled to testify next week and prosecutors are expected to ask him about his alleged ties to chief Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and co-conspirator Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni citizen and key planner in the plot. Yarkas is accused of helping to arrange a meeting between Atta and Binalshibh in Tarragona, Spain, on July 16, 2001, during which the final details of the planned hijackings were discussed.
Court officials say the trial is likely to last at least four months.
