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Madrid trial: Moroccan trio deny involvement

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MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- The Madrid train bombings trial entered its second day Friday with three more defendants denying involvement in the 2004 attacks that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800.

The Moroccan trio included Youssef Belhadj, who prosecutors claimed was the hooded figure seen in an Islamic militant video claiming responsibility for the bombings.

The 30-year-old told judges he would only answer questions from his defense lawyer and later condemned the Madrid attacks and said he was innocent.

In the video, found near a Madrid mosque two days after the bombings on morning rush-hour commuter trains in the Spanish capital, the man prosecutors allege to be Belhadj says the attacks were revenge for Spanish military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Belhadj refused to answer questions as state prosecutor Olga Sanchez asked him if he had chosen the date of the attacks, as prosecutors allege, and whether he had visited training camps in Afghanistan or received training in detonating explosives by remote control.

Belhadj claimed two of his relatives also being tried on lesser charges had told Spanish police he was a member of al Qaeda in Europe out of fear for their families.

"They were insulted and threatened that they would be taken back to Morocco," Belhadj told his defense attorney. "So if I were in their shoes ... I would have said things like that."

On Friday the court also heard from Hasan el Haski, 45, who prosecutors claimed to be the leader in Spain of a militant group with links to several of the alleged attackers, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, and a third Moroccan, Jamal Zougam, alleged to have placed some of the backpack bombs on commuter trains. Both denied links to the alleged ringleaders behind the attacks.

"I don't know anyone and nobody knows me," said el Haski.

Zougam, who ran a shop where most of the mobile phone cards used to set off the bombs came from, also denied involvement in the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group and laughed out loud as a prosecutor read out the accusations against him.

He refused to answer many questions, including when he was asked to explain how the cards used in the attacks were purchased in his shop. Zougam claimed he had been asleep at home on the morning of the blasts and said witnesses who believed they had seen him placing a bomb on one of the trains were confused because his face had been shown on television.

Belhadj, el Haski and a third man, Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed, also known as "Mohammed the Egyptian," are believed by prosecutors to have been among the ideologues of the attacks.

Ahmed, 35, of Egypt, was the first defendant to take the stand on Thursday when he refused to give evidence, denied involvement in the bombings and condemned the attacks "unconditionally and completely."

"I know nothing about these accusations," Ahmed said through an interpreter. "With all respect, I am not going to answer any questions even from my lawyer." (Watch Ahmed refuse to answer questions as trial opens )

Under questioning by his attorney, he later said: "I never had any relation to the events which occurred in Madrid."

Ahmed was detained in Italy in June 2004 on a warrant from Spanish authorities. Italian prosecutors said they had tapped phone conversations in which he told an associate: "I'm the thread to Madrid, it's my work."

Twenty-nine defendants, including many Moroccans, are in the dock. Prosecutors say locally based Islamic terrorists, inspired by al Qaeda, carried out the attack, aided by some Spaniards accused of trafficking in explosives that ended up in the hands of the Islamic suspects.

Seven defendants are considered prime suspects, and each would face sentences of about 38,000 years in prison for mass murder, if convicted, according to a prosecution order issued last November. The other 22 face lesser charges.

Three other defendants are suspected of putting some of the bombs on the four trains that were torn apart by the explosions. They were identified as Jamal Zougam, 33, and Abdelmajid Bouchar, 24, both of Morocco, and Basel Ghalyoun, 26, of Syria.

The seventh prime defendant is Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, 30, of Spain, considered a "necessary cooperator" in the attacks by allegedly facilitating the explosives that were manufactured in Spain and stolen from a mine in the north.

Spanish law prohibits the death penalty, and even if convicted on all charges, the defendants would serve no more than 40 years in prison, according to Spanish law, the prosecution said.

All 29 were indicted last April and all profess innocence, court officials and some of their lawyers told CNN.

The coordinated bombings of four trains on March 11, 2004, was the deadliest terrorist attack in Western Europe since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

Tight security around courthouse

Under tight security, a three-judge panel of the National Court are hearing the case in a special courthouse on the western outskirts of Madrid. Four cameras, controlled by the court, are providing live broadcast pictures of the trial.

Eighteen of the 29 defendants are in pre-trial prison and will be brought under police escort to the courthouse and seated in a bulletproof glass enclosure in the courtroom.

The other 11, accused of lesser roles, will be seated in a special section of open court, because they are free on provisional liberty, with the condition that they report regularly to authorities.

Most of the 29 will have court-appointed lawyers because they could not afford a private defense attorney, said Eduardo Garcia Pena, one of the lawyers representing the defendants.

Many of the defendants avoided looking at relatives' victims gathered in the courtroom, while some survivors and families of the victims chose to watch proceedings on closed-circuit TV in a separate room.

"I hope justice is rendered and that there is a worthy sentence," Pilar Manjon, the president of a victims' association who lost her 20-year-old son in the attacks, told The Associated Press.

Of the defendants, Manjon said: "I will look them right in the eye. They destroyed my life but they will not destroy me."

The trial, with hundreds of witnesses, is expected to last until the summer, and a verdict could come by autumn.

Spain's Interior Ministry increased the nation's alert status this week from low to medium, bringing increased police patrols at public places such as transit stations. (Full story)

"There's always an increased threat when you broadcast worldwide a trial and you show to the last corner of the Earth that terrorism has a firm response from the courts in a state of law," chief prosecutor Javier Zaragoza said in an interview with Spanish TV Cuatro.

Western officials tell CNN that Spain remains under threat and that Spanish authorities have dozens of hard-core Islamic radicals under surveillance.

Spanish police have arrested 200 Islamic terrorist suspects in the country since the bombings, for various alleged plots.

To date only one person, who was then 16 years old, has been convicted in the attacks. He was the only minor charged in the case. In November 2004 the Spanish youth pleaded guilty to transporting explosives stolen from a mine in northern Spain and of collaborating with a terrorist group.

Seven other key suspects in the bombings blew themselves up three weeks after the attacks in 2004 as police closed in on their hideout in a Madrid suburb.

The technique of using cell phones as timers and connected to the explosives was a method taught at a terrorist training camp in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, a prosecution document says.

-- CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman contributed to this report.

Copyright 2007 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

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