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Al Qaeda suspects appear in court
By CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Sixteen al Qaeda suspects indicted last week -- including Al-Jazeera TV correspondent Tayseer Allouni -- have been called before a Spanish judge for further pre-trial testimony. The suspects appeared Wednesday one after another, not as a group, in closed-door hearings with investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon, who issued an indictment of 35 al Qaeda suspects last week, including the group of 16. Court officials said the appearances for most of the suspects were routine and intended to formally inform them of the accusations against them. Most of the others named in the indictment, including Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda's leader, are at large or in custody outside Spain. The pre-trial hearing is just the latest move this month by Spanish authorities against al Qaeda. It began with the arrest of Allouni at his home in the southern city of Granada on September 5. He was ordered to jail on suspicion of membership in the Spanish branch of al Qaeda for alleged terrorist support activities, including financing, that the court said was done outside of his role as a correspondent for Al-Jazeera. The Syrian-born Allouni, who interviewed bin Laden shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, is a high-profile correspondent who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and maintains that he is innocent. Allouni, handcuffed behind his back, spoke briefly with Al-Jazeera's Brussels Bureau Chief Ahmed Kamel on his way into court, telling Kamel in Arabic, "Everything is OK." Allouni was before Garzon for about 20 minutes. Another key figure brought into court was Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, the Syrian-born suspected al Qaeda ringleader in Spain, who has been in jail for nearly two years. His lawyer, Jacobo Teijelo, said he had requested that Garzon release Barakat Yarkas.
He said Barakat Yarkas had told Garzon he condemned the September 11 attacks. He blamed the charges against him on bad Arabic translations of his phone calls, which had been wiretapped. The 700-page indictment issued last Wednesday accused Barakat Yarkas of a role in the September 11 attacks, but it accused Allouni only of being a member of al Qaeda. At least eight of the 35 suspects named in the indictment have been linked to the attacks. Last Thursday, a day after the indictment was issued, Spanish authorities arrested four Syrian-born men and a Moroccan man. All five were linked by the court to Barakat Yarkas and three of them were linked to Allouni. The five were charged last Sunday before Garzon, who accused four of them of membership of the Spanish branch of al Qaeda. His court order said the fifth suspect, accused of the lesser charge of collaborating with al Qaeda, would be released if he could post $65,400 in bail by this week. Spain and Germany have been regarded as key staging grounds for the September 11 attacks. Authorities have previously told CNN that al Qaeda "sleeper cells" in Spain provided financing, lodging, forged documents and recruitment for al Qaeda. Mohamed Atta, the suicide pilot of the first plane to strike the World Trade Center in New York, and the suspected ringleader of the attacks, was known by authorities to have been in Spain twice in 2001. During Atta's second trip, in July 2001, Garzon's court order has said that Atta met at Tarragona, in eastern Spain "with other members of the cell that perpetrated the attacks of September 11, 2001." Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, about 40 Islamic extremist suspects have been arrested in Spain. Some have been released for lack of evidence and others have been released on bail. None has faced trial.
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