July 18, 2008	Friday	Rajab 14, 1429

MADRID, July 17: Spain’s supreme court on Thursday overturned the guilty verdicts on four of the 21 people convicted over the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.

It also upheld a lower court’s decision to acquit one of the alleged masterminds of the Al Qaeda-inspired attacks, Rabei Ousmane Sayed Ahmed, known as “Mohammed the Egyptian”.

And it handed down a four-year prison term to a Spaniard, Antonio Toro, who had been acquitted on charges of transporting explosives.

The early morning bombings on four packed commuter trains on March 11, 2004 were the deadliest terror attacks in the West since the September 11, 2001 strikes against the US.

On October 31 last year, Spain’s anti-terrorism court convicted 21 people of involvement, and acquitted six others.

The supreme court on Thursday overturned the convictions of Basel Ghalyoun and Mohamed Almallah Dabas, both condemned to 12 years in prison for belonging to a terrorist group.

It also cleared Abdelilah El Fadual El Akil, condemned to nine years for allegedly collaborating with a terrorist group, as well as Raul Gonzalez Pena, who had received five years for allegedly supplying explosives.

But it rejected an appeal by prosecutors against the acquittal of “Mohammed the Egyptian”.

The court had ruled last October that there was not enough evidence to condemn him as an organiser of the attacks.

Prosecutors had appealed his acquittal on another charge of belonging to a terrorist group and sought a prison sentence of 10 years.

On that charge, the judges in October decided that he could not be convicted twice for the same crime.—AFP