Victims Criticize Sentences in Spain

Of the 28 defendants, the National Court acquitted seven defendants

The association of victims of the March 11 of 2004 attacks in Madrid criticized on Wednesday the sentences dictated to the defendants and announced they will appeal them “wherever necessary.”

Spain’s National Court acquitted seven of the 28 defendants, it did not condemn any of them as intellectual author and in many cases it dictated lower sentences than those requested by the prosecution, said one of the victims’ associations.

“We do not like assassins to be free, there cannot be two different ways to measure,” the “M-11 Terrorism Victims” association president Pilar Manjon said.

Of the 28 defendants, the National Court acquitted seven defendants, including one of the most wanted, Rabei Osman El Sayedalias “the Egyptian,” the court sentenced two others to 42,922 years in prison each, while the rest received different prison sentences.

The prosecution said it was satisfied with the sentences and that it would not appeal them. Help the M-11 Victims’ president Angeles Dominguez said people have been sentenced but we want to know “who masterminded the attacks.”

Dominguez asked Spain’s security forces and judicial institutions to continue the investigations to find and punish the intellectual authors of the M-11 killings.

In the worse terrorist day in Spain’s and Europe’s history, the almost simultaneous train bombings in Madrid left at least 191 killed and 1,800 injured on March 11 of 2004.

Meanwhile, Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on Wednesday that the harsh sentences dictated on Wednesday for the March 11 of 2004 terrorist attacks have made justice and established “the truth of the facts.”

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/01/content_6986324.htm

2007-11-01