October 31, 2007

Madrid Mastermind Walks

The Spanish court trying the remaining suspects in the deadly Madrid bombings convicted the actual perpetrators today, sentencing them to gaudy terms that wind up being no more than 40 years each. The man who planned the attacks, and whose voice could be heard on wiretaps bragging about it, won an acquittal:

One of the accused masterminds of the 2004 Madrid terror bombings was acquitted of all charges today by a Spanish court in the culmination to a politically divisive trial over Europe's worst Islamic militant terror attack.

Rabei Osman, a 35-year-old Egyptian, allegedly bragged during a wiretapped phone conversation that the attacks, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800, were his idea. Twenty-eight people were charged in the attacks.

Four lead defendants in the bombings were found guilty of murder and other charges, each handed sentences that stretched into the thousands of years in the day of carnage etched in Spain's collective memory and known simply as 11-M, much like the term 9-11 in the U.S.

Fourteen other people were found guilty of lesser charges such as belonging to a terrorist group. Seven other lesser suspects were acquitted on all charges.

The other lead defendants got sentenced to almost 40,000 years in prison each, the consequence of killing 191 people in the 11-M attacks. However, thanks to Spanish law, no one can serve more than 40 years, as AFP reports. That works out to 76 days per victim, a detestable result.

Even more detestable, Osman walks away from any responsibility for the Madrid attack. Apparently the Spanish court didn't take Osman's own word for his leadership in attacking Spanish civilians with bombs on 11-M. The lack of a conviction in this case will certainly do nothing to deter future attacks in Spain, especially for those who style themselves as terrorist leaders. Even wiretaps won't bother such people in the future, since the courts don't put any stock into the taped conversations captured by intel and law-enforcement agents.

Once again, this shows the limitations in treating acts of war as common criminal acts. Civil court systems do not have the capacity to deal with foreign groups that conduct acts of sabotage and terror, because they were not designed for those purposes. Nations build military forces to handle such acts. Spain has forgotten this, as has most of Europe. Perhaps Osman's acquittal will remind them.

Posted by Ed Morrissey on October 31, 2007 8:02 AM | Comments () | TrackBacks (0)

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Captain Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather. He lives with his wife Marcia, also known as the First Mate, their two dogs, and frequently watch their granddaughter Kayla, whom Captain Ed calls The Little Admiral.

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