Terror suspect takes stand at Madrid trial
A terror suspect who allegedly shot detailed video footage of the World Trade Centre – images described by a Spanish judge as the genesis of the September 11 plots – took the stand today at the trial of an al-Qaida cell accused of helping to plot the suicide airliner attacks.
Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, 39, took the video of the twin towers in New York and other landmarks during a visit to the US in 1997, court documents say.
The videotapes eventually were passed on to “operative members of al-Qaida and would become the preliminary information on the attacks against the twin towers,” Judge Baltasar Garzon wrote in a September 2003 indictment against the Syrian-born Ghalyoun and other alleged members of a Spanish al Qaida cell.
Ghalyoun and two other suspects are charged with using Spain as a staging ground to help plot the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Twenty-one other suspects are charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation, weapons possession and other offences, but not September 11 planning.
The alleged leader of the cell, Imad Yarkas, testified this week that he had nothing to do with the attacks.
He also denied setting up a meeting in Spain in July 2001 at which one of the suspected suicide pilots and an alleged co-ordinator of the attacks planned last-minute details of the massacre.
