Spanish judge indicts bin Laden, terrorists

MADRID, Spain -- A Spanish judge indicted Osama bin Laden and 34 others Wednesday on charges of terrorism, including the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.\nIn a nearly 700-page document, investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzon issued international arrest orders for bin Laden and seven others suspected in the Sept. 11 hijackings.\nSpain served "as a place or base for resting, preparation, indoctrinating, support and financing" of al Qaeda, Garzon said.\nThe indictment charged bin Laden and nine others with membership in a terrorist organization and "as many crimes of terrorist murder ... as there were dead and injured" in the Sept. 11 attacks.\nBin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, is already under indictment in the United States for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Thousands of U.S.-led coalition troops and Afghan forces are searching for him.\nGarzon said terrorism is one of the crimes included in Spain's universal justice legislation, under which some offenses, such as crimes against humanity, can be tried here even if they were committed elsewhere. Garzon has used this law to try to prosecute abuses under military rule in Chile and Argentina.\nThe list of indicted suspects includes Tayssir Alouni, the Al-Jazeera journalist arrested Sept. 8 in Spain, and Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, who was accused of leading an al Qaeda cell in Spain and was arrested in Madrid in November 2001.\nSix others believed to be in Spain also were indicted, but not all will be jailed, according to the order, which was obtained by The Associated Press. Garzon ratified jailing orders for 11 already in prison in Spain.\nGarzon also accused the suspects of belonging to a terrorist group and other crimes, including weapons possession, tax fraud, forgery and other crimes.\nOther names on the indictment list include Ramzi Binalshibh, another core leader of the Hamburg, Germany cell that helped prepare the Sept. 11 attacks. He was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002.\nAlong with Germany, Spain is known to have been an important staging ground for the Sept. 11 attacks. Accused ringleader and suicide pilot Mohamed Atta visited Spain in July 2001 and is believed to have held a key planning meeting with other participants in the northeastern Spanish region of Tarragona.\nGarzon said the warrants and indictments are not so much aimed at putting bin Laden on trial in Spain as preventing him and other suspects from escaping justice altogether if and when they are caught.\n"When this happens, that will be the time establish priority of jurisdiction," Garzon wrote. He also said at least one Spaniard died in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York.\nIn the United States, bin Laden is charged in an indictment returned by a grand jury in New York with multiple charges resulting from the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of the U.S embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed more than 200 people. The indictment charges bin Laden with murder of U.S. nationals, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and attack on a federal facility resulting in death.\nThe only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States is Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who admits allegiance to al Qaeda but denies being part of the hijacking plot. His trial is on hold while the courts determine whether he should have access to captured al Qaeda operatives he says will support his innocence.\nIt was not clear if bin Laden has ever been formally charged in Afghanistan, a war-shattered country that lacks a viable justice system. Jawid Luddin, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said he did not know of any specific charges again bin Laden, who would presumably be turned over to U.S. authorities if captured.\n"We consider what happened on 9/11 to be one of the biggest crimes against humanity, the biggest terrorist attack in history, and of course, the perpetrators and people behind it need to be brought to justice," Luddin told the AP.\nAbout 40 Islamic extremist suspects have been arrested in Spain since the attacks, although many were released for lack of evidence.\nGarzon has been leading the investigation in Spain into alleged members of al Qaeda and other militant Islamic groups.\nGarzon had Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested in London but failed in 1999 to take him to court. Britain ultimately freed the aging ex-despot on grounds he was unfit to stand trial.\nLast month, he had requested that Buenos Aires extradite 40 men indicted in Spain for abuses during Argentina's "dirty war."\nHe also had focused on Spain's Basque separatist conflict, working to break up commando units of the armed group ETA.