Moroccan Gets 20 Yrs In Jail For Madrid Bomb Links

Abdelilah Hriz was found guilty of forming a criminal gang and a series a terrorism-related offences.

A Moroccan man was jailed for 20 years on Thursday for links to the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, the state news agency MAP reported.

Abdelilah Hriz, 29, was found guilty of forming a criminal gang and a series a terrorism-related offences including helping to destroy public property using explosives, MAP said, citing the judgement of the Sale criminal appeal court, near Rabat.

Prosecutors had requested life imprisonment based on the charges, which also included collecting funds for terrorism. Hriz denied any involvement in the attacks.

Hriz, from the northern Moroccan city of Kenitra, was arrested in Syria and transferred to Morocco where a court sentenced him to three years in prison. But he was acquitted in May 2007 for lack of evidence.

In February, Hriz was detained again after Spanish investigators produced new evidence which they said linked him to the attacks.

A Spanish judge travelled to Morocco and took DNA samples from Hriz that matched samples picked up in two places linked to the attacks, MAP said, quoting Spanish police laboratory tests.

Ten bombs, packed into sports bags and detonated with mobile phones, tore through packed commuter trains on the morning of March 11, 2004.

Three weeks later seven men, including two suspected ringleaders of the bombings, blew themselves up in an apartment after police closed in on them.

Following a lengthy trial, a Spanish court last year sentenced two Moroccans and a Spaniard to 42,924 years in jail for the attacks.

The high nominal sentences reflected convictions on multiple counts but under Spanish law nobody can serve more than 40 years in jail.