"Iraq and Afghanistan don't matter to us"

The proceedings of the Madrid bombing trial have been marked in recent weeks by the unexpected hunger strike of fourteen of the defendants, in protest against what they perceived as the presumption of guilt thrust upon them by the media and politicians. Lawyers for the striking men expressed disgust at the conduct of the trial. Their clients, "who continue to condemn the bombings," have "lost faith" in the Spanish judicial system. Judge Javier Gomez Bermudez maintained a firm line, insisting that the trial would carry on and not be suspended. The strike ended on 21 May after eleven days, when the strikers conceded that their act of defiance may be misinterpreted by the Spanish public. They issued an official statement pleading that the trial be "extracted from the political arena" and that the media afford them the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.Luisa Barrenechea is a lawyer and researcher of European counter-terrorism at FRIDE in Madrid.

The trial was not overly distracted by the drama behind the scenes, with technical testimonies proceeding apace. Various witnesses discussed the traffic of calls on defendants' cell phones, the acoustics of the Islamic militant video claiming responsibility for the attacks, the genetic profiles of the defendants (DNA tests linked evidence from the scene of the train blasts with some of the defendants) and the financing of the 11-M attacks. With respect to this last matter, police claimed that "the cost of the attacks was relatively small," and that the bulk of the funding possibly came through Jamal Ahmidan, one of the defendants who had considerable dealings with the criminal underworld.

Read her previous reports from the trial proceedings on 30 March, 13 April, 20 April and 27 April.Any lingering doubts over the deaths of the men in the blast at Leganés were put to rest when forensic experts confirmed that the victims were killed by an explosion "when still alive". Carmen Baladia of the Forensic Anatomical Institute repeatedly distinguished the dead in Leganés from those in Madrid, referring to those killed in the Madrid blasts as "our dead".

The court was surprised by the declaration of the father of the defendant Abdelmajid Bouchar (considered to be one of the main authors of the attack and for whom the prosecution has sought a sentence of 38,654 years in prison). This witness, who declared in Berber, pleaded that "we have come here to work, not to bring problems" and that "if the trial demonstrates that my son has done something, I am going to pledge to die before him". His conclusion left the court room frozen: "The problems in Iraq or Afghanistan don't matter to us... we are killed by everyone." Sometimes, it seems difficult to continue surprising us after all that we have heard during these months of the trial, but this cruel and brutal commentary still struck home.

The disciple of Rabei Osman Sabed, "the Egyptian", Yahia Mouad, via video-conference from Italy refused to declare, whereas three other witnesses, who were jailed for their involvement in the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group and were linked to Hassan el Haski, supposed intellectual author of the 11-M attacks, testified from Versailles. The witnesses tried to diminish their incriminating connection to El Haski, who also participated in the hunger strike.

Last week concluded with testimony on the amount of explosives assumed to have been in the hands of the terrorists. According to the experts, 312 kilos were transported from the mine in the rugged Asturias to Madrid. The quantity used in the attacks remains uncertain. The deliberations of the coming week, centred once more on the explosives, may clarify such unknowns.

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