Posted on 07/15/2005 1:01:05 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
MADRID, Spain (AP) - Inmates on Friday beat up a suspected al-Qaida cell leader jailed on charges he helped plot the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, breaking his jaw, nose and a tooth and injuring one of his eyes, Spanish officials said.
Imad Yarkas, 42, a Syrian-born Spaniard, was set upon by other prisoners in the dining hall of a prison in the eastern city of Castellon, said officials at the Interior Ministry department that oversees Spain's prisons. Spanish government press officials did not give their names.
An investigation has been opened because Yarkas, who is being held in solitary confinement, normally takes his meals alone, after other inmates have left the mess hall.
One official said some inmates apparently finished breakfast later than usual, and Yarkas began eating before they had left. Some began yelling at him, and when officers started to remove Yarkas from the room for his own safety another group of inmates pounced and punched the alleged al-Qaida member, the official said.
Yarkas and two other men of Syrian origin went on trial in late April in Madrid on charges of using Spain as a staging ground to help plot the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Twenty-one other Muslims in the same trial, mainly Syrians and Moroccans, faced lesser charges of terrorism and other offenses. The trial concluded July 5 and a verdict was expected in September.
Yarkas has been in jail since November 2001, spending most of that time in Madrid prisons. He arrived at the Castellon prison Thursday.
The Europa Press news agency reported that prisoners involved in Friday's events accused Yarkas of also being responsible for last year's al-Qaida-linked train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500. The prison system officials said they could not confirm the report.
Spanish investigators say some of the suspects in the Madrid attacks had close ties to Yarkas, but he has not been charged in that case.
However, at a parliamentary hearing last October, Rafael Gomez Menor, head of a Spanish police unit specializing in Islamic terror cases, said he considered Yarkas to be the ideological and logistical coordinator of the cell that carried out the Madrid bombings.
Send him some pork rinds, though...
Where's the outrage?
Put the Prison Warden on TRIAL for ABUSE.
I always said that prisoners sometimes have a better sense of simple justice than most courts. . .
Can we send a few of our favorite GitMo chargees over to Spain for a much needed vacation? Please???
Well isn't this just a crying shame...
What's the Spanish for "Dahmer solution"..........?
You should see what they do to rapists, especially child rapists, in those jails.
Well, they could have done worse.
They could have put underwear on his head.
(sorry, someone had to say it)
Spanish government press officials did not give their names.
***
What the government ought to do is give each inmate some award for a job well done. These guys are heroes.
Now that there Spanish prison is my idea of what a prison should be........
Put this TROPer filth in general population!
A damn good start!
Spanish jailbirds have more common sense than the US democrat party.
Poor chap was 'Durbinized',, never knew what hit him.
We should pass the hat and get them something nice.
I feel strangely indifferent to his plight.
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