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Al Qaeda funding trial resumesBy Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman SPECIAL REPORT
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSMADRID, Spain (CNN) -- The trial of two men charged with financing global al Qaeda activities has resumed in Madrid in a basement courtroom under tight security. The prosecution is seeking eight-year jail terms for each of the defendants, a court official told CNN. The defendants were identified on Wednesday as Spaniard Enrique Cerda Ibanez, 43, and Pakistani-born Ahmed Rukhsar, 40. Both are businessmen and were arrested in 2003 in Spain. The prosecution alleges that Cerda sent money to al Qaeda operatives and they also link him to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the court official said. Sheikh Mohammed, who is in U.S. custody, is considered to be a mastermind of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Sheikh Mohammed also is linked to the Djerba, Tunisia synagogue bombing in 2002 that killed 21 people and a suicide bomber. Thirty others were wounded. Cerda repeatedly pleaded innocent during his hours-long testimony on Wednesday, at times on the verge of tears and at other times almost shouting. "I am completely innocent," he told the three-judge panel hearing the case, adding that his arrest had "ruined" his family and caused his family's ceramics business to close in eastern Valencia province. The defense lawyer for Rukhsar, who did not immediately take the stand on Wednesday, told CNN that his client also has pleaded innocent earlier in the trial. The trial started last September 19 at the National Court in Madrid, but was quickly suspended after France declined to permit two French secret police officers to testify in the trial, alleging that their identities could be revealed due to allegedly improper security measures at the Spanish court, defense lawyers told CNN. The two defendants, Cerda and Rukhsar, were arrested on a request from French officials who have been investigating the synagogue bombing, and the testimony of the two French police officers was considered important for the trial. But defense lawyers said the French officers eventually offered to testify by videoconference only if their identities could be disguised, which the Spanish court rejected. In the end, it was expected that written statements from the two officers, in response to written questions from the court, would be read aloud in the trial. The court official told CNN that prosecutors allege the defendants collaborated with al Qaeda through a series of money transfers, linked to their respective businesses. Ceramics tradeThe prosecution alleges that Cerda received repeated phone calls in March 2002, from the brother of the suicide bomber who would soon after, in April 2002, carry out the attack on the synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia. The prosecution says that immediately after one of the calls from the suicide bomber's brother to Cerda, the brother then called Sheikh Mohammed, the senior al Qaeda operative, the court official said. Cerda testified Wednesday that he did not know the suicide bomber's brother and had not answered his calls, and he also testified that he didn't know Sheikh Mohammed. Cerda testified that he knew and had done business in ceramics for more than a decade with a Pakistani man, Issa Ismail Muhammad, whom prosecutors allege was an al Qaeda operative who used the alias "Issa of Karachi." Muhammad had imported to his native Pakistan Cerda's ceramics products from Spain, including decorative wall tiles or simpler floor tiles. Spanish officials say Muhammad's whereabouts are unknown. Cerda, who was arrested at a ceramics industry trade fair in Spain in 2003, denied Wednesday making money transfers to Muhammad or his colleagues. He testified his company's ledgers, which he said were recently released to the court by Spanish Civil Guards, would show that Cerda has simply been collecting on ceramics debts owed by Muhammad to Cerda's firm. The prosecution alleges that Rukhsar, in March 2002, just weeks before the synagogue bombing, transferred 9,500 euros ($11,400 USD) from his account to Muhammad's account. Rukhsar's lawyer, Gerardo Rubio, told CNN that the transfer had indeed occurred, but it was not for terrorist ends. Instead, Rukhsar's lawyer said, it was meant to allow Pakistani immigrants in northern Spain, where Rukhsar's telephone call center business was located, to send home money to family members in Pakistan, via a transfer in which Muhammad would receive the money in Spain. Then he and his associates would make sure the families were paid in Pakistan, thus avoiding costly international money transfer fees. Last September, the National Court convicted 18 men of belonging to or collaborating with al Qaeda in Europe's largest terrorism trial to date. The convictions included a 27-year jail sentence for Syrian-born Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, as the leader of an al Qaeda cell in Spain who also conspired to commit the 9/11 attacks, according to the verdict. Six other defendants in that trial were acquitted. Another pending case in Spain is the investigation into the Madrid train bombings last year that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500. A total of 109 people, many of them Moroccans, have been charged in that case. Indictments are expected later this year and a trial would follow next year. 
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