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By Mark Houser - TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Sunday, June 5, 2005

MADRID, Spain -- Two dozen men sit behind bulletproof glass in a new courtroom built to hold the biggest al-Qaida trial Europe has yet seen.

In proceedings that began in April, the Spanish National Court is considering whether the accused men belonged to a terrorist cell that helped kill nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

Key testimony hinges on whether central figures in the alleged Madrid cell arranged a meeting in Spain two months before the attacks between hijacker Mohammed Atta and planner Ramzi Binalshibh.

Prosecutors also claim the group's leaders funneled money to the hijackers and to other terrorists in Europe, and that one man made videotapes of the World Trade Center and passed them to other al-Qaida members to plan the attacks.

Prosecutors have asked for 62,000-year sentences for the group's three central figures. But in reality, the three could face no more than 30 each. That's the longest anyone can be jailed in Spain. In addition, the country has no death penalty.

Accused cell member Yusuf Galan is not one of the major players. Galan, a Spaniard who converted to Islam, faces only 18 years for being part of the cell, visiting an Islamic militant training camp in Indonesia in 2001, and having illegal guns and knives in his home when he was arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He also had militant literature, a map of London with a church and synagogue circled, and a map of Hannover, Germany.

And he had a map of Pittsburgh.

The map is a mystery. It is at least 40 years old. The Point Bridge, closed in 1959 and demolished thereafter, is still shown as a traffic artery across the Monongahela River, while the "proposed" Fort Duquesne Bridge, built in the 1960s, is just dotted lines.

A sequence of numbers -- 71, 73, 75, 76, 5, 64, 67, 68 -- is scrawled in one margin. Crestview Road, a hilly residential street in Banksville, is circled.

Residents of Crestview Road say they have not noticed any suspicious behavior on their small street, which is lined with middle-class brick houses in a neighborhood popular with city workers. Pittsburgh FBI special agent in charge Chris Briese declined to comment on the map.

The map raises the question: Why was Pittsburgh on the radar of an alleged Islamic terrorist in Spain?

One possibility: In the 1990s, a group of Saudi students in Pittsburgh published an Arabic-language magazine, Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, that often featured jihadist rhetoric. For example, one 1998 editorial called the United States a "strategic target" and wished for its destruction. The magazine was distributed to hard-line mosques in Europe and elsewhere until it ceased publication in 2000.

The magazine's publisher, Bandar Al-Mashary, and editor, Mohsen Al-Mohsen, headed an Islamic foundation based in Banksville and prayed at a temporary mosque in a Banksville hotel, both about a mile from Crestview Road. Both men returned to Saudi Arabia after getting doctorates at the University of Pittsburgh.

The lead prosecutor in the Spanish case, Pedro Rubiro, said the map is of little interest to his case. Galan has not been asked about it, and the government barred a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter from interviewing him.

Spanish authorities do not say Galan or any of the others on trial visited Pittsburgh.

A bigger trial

While observers on both sides of the Atlantic are watching the trial closely, a future Spanish courtroom battle looms larger -- that of the Madrid train bombers.

Cell phone-triggered backpack bombs exploded in Madrid's main train station and two other stops on March 11, 2004, killing 191 people. The political aftermath of those bombings ultimately toppled Spain's conservative government.

More than two dozen suspects, mostly Moroccan, have been jailed in the investigation, and dozens more have been released but are considered suspects. Authorities say at least one of the alleged al-Qaida ringleaders now on trial in Madrid also helped plan the train bombings.

In Spain, accused terrorists can wait up to four years in jail while the case against them is assembled, but a top official in the Spanish prosecutor's office said he expects the bomb trial to begin next year.

ail time can be cut short, as prosecutor Rubiro knows well.

His boss, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Jesus Santos, boasted that Rubiro was the first person in Spain to win a conviction against an Islamic terrorist group. That was in 1997.

One man Santos put away, an Algerian named Allekema Lamari, was released after an appeal.

Weeks after the Madrid attack, police tracked seven suspects to an apartment in the suburbs and surrounded it. The men inside chanted prayers, then blew themselves up.

DNA tests of the remains showed Lamari was one of them.

Asked how he felt when he heard the news that a man he had once put away might well have been one of the train bombers, Rubiro looked at the floor.

"I can't answer that," he said.

What went wrong?

Spain's legislature has created a 3/11 commission to examine what went wrong and to look for ways to improve security. It plans to publish its findings this month. Meanwhile, the government has added 300 intelligence personnel to handle terrorism and has tightened regulations on mining explosives, which were used in the bombings.

But the commission is frequently bogged down in strident partisanship, said Josep Guinart, a commission member and legislator who is aligned with the ruling socialist coalition.

"One of the problems of this commission is we are only politicians, so sometimes it means the commission is less a place for investigating what happened on the 11th of March, and more a place where the (political) parties have a fight," Guinart said.

The bombings took place three days before national elections. In the immediate aftermath, former President Jose Maria Aznar and other leaders from the then-ruling conservative party announced Basque terrorists were the likely culprits.

As facts emerged pointing to Islamic terrorism, protesters massed in the streets of Madrid to accuse the government of lying. Aznar, they said, was trying to obscure the real reason Spain was targeted -- its participation in the war in Iraq. The conservatives lost, and the troops were withdrawn soon after.

Conservative Senator Ignacio Cosido said blaming ETA, the Basque terrorist group, for 3/11 was a mistake. But he said ETA has killed more than 800 Spaniards in hundreds of attacks -- an ETA car bomb in Madrid injured five last month -- so investigators had good reason for their suspicions.

Cosido said his biggest worry is that the Spanish public will assume it is no longer targeted by Islamic terrorists now that its soldiers have left Iraq.

"My perception is that Spanish society doesn't have an understanding of the magnitude of this threat. They do not understand that we are not free of this threat," he said.

Spanish investigators announced last fall they had broken up a new Madrid bomb plot, this time with multiple targets, including a skyscraper, a soccer stadium and the Atocha train station again.

But some are skeptical, such as documentary filmmaker Miguel Angel Nieto, of Madrid.

"The police need to (prove) to public opinion that 3/11 was not because of the war in Iraq. So I think there were no plans to attack anything more," he said.

Nieto is one of a group of filmmakers who produced a collection of documentary short features called "Todos Ibamos en Ese Tren" ("We Were All on That Train") after the attacks. Proceeds went to the victims' families. The documentary has been shown in several film festivals, including Chicago.

Angel Nieto's segment is called "Victim Zero." In it, a wife, a mother, a friend and a daughter talk about the man they thought they had lost in the explosion, until someone spotted him on the news carrying a wounded man.

The man himself refused to talk -- many of the victims of the train attacks have asked for privacy -- but Angel Nieto says in the end it was better that way.

"My idea was there were a lot of anonymous people who were helping at that moment. This is one of them. It's not important, his identity. He is one of many," he said.

The piles of candles, floral bouquets and handwritten notes that once cluttered the floor of Atocha station have been cleaned up. In their place are two computer terminals where a passersby can scan a handprint -- a frequent image in anti-terror protests here -- and type testimonials to victims. Loudspeakers play a short loop of somber piano music.

"Life has to go on, but this is one way we can always remember that day," said Susana Calzado, 31, an accountant from Madrid who paused at the memorial for a quiet moment before walking to her train.