Barcelona

Terrorist plotters jailed: A court in Spain handed down prison sentences of up to 14 years to 11 Islamic militants convicted of belonging to a terrorist cell that was plotting a coordinated series of suicide bomb attacks against the Barcelona metro system. The men, 10 from Pakistan and one from India, were all acquitted of actually conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack, because the amount of explosives seized by police was deemed sufficient only for training purposes. Prosecutors alleged that the men had been acting under the orders of the Pakistani Taliban, and that their plan had been to launch the attacks ahead of the 2008 general election, to protest the presence of Spanish troops in Afghanistan. The plot has chilling echoes of the 2004 Madrid bombings, in which 191 people lost their lives.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More