(31 Oct 2007) SHOTLIST
1. Wide exterior of Atocha station
2. Pan to memorial for Madrid bombings outside Atocha station
3. Various of passengers and trains
4. SOUNBITE: (Spanish) Gregoria Lopez, nurse:
"Yes, for us it's very clear, the Islamists did it. That day was very sad for all of us."
5. Various of passengers on train
6. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Gregoria Lopez, nurse:
"The impact (from the bomb) was very big and everyone was really afraid. I was in one of the trains, in the second wagon, and it exploded just as I had finished going up the stairs in order to take another train to Fuenlabrada."
7. Various of passengers and trains
++DAWN SHOTS++
8. Pan right of people walking to underground station
9. Close of tube station sign in Lavapies neighbourhood
10. Pan from street to phone centre in Tribulete street where Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan national accused of placing at least one of the backpack bombs aboard a train, was arrested
11. Close of sign
STORYLINE
Spanish commuters on Wednesday boarded trains and mingled as normal inside the busy Atocha train station, where one of the explosive devices in the 2004 Madrid train bombings went off, on the day that judges were set to announce verdicts in that case.
Prosecutors were seeking jail terms of nearly 40-thousand years for each of the top suspects in Europe's worst Islamic terror attack.
The blasts from ten backpacks filled with dynamite and nails killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800 during the morning rush hour of March 11, 2004.
"Yes, for us it's very clear, the Islamists did it. That day was very sad for all of us," said Gregoria Lopez, a nurse who witnessed one of the bomb blasts.
"The impact (from the bomb) was very big and everyone was really afraid. I was in one of the trains, in the second wagon, and it exploded just as I had finished going up the stairs in order to take another train to Fuenlabrada," she said.
It was the worst tragedy to hit Spain since its civil war of the 1930s and arguably toppled a government - the first time an administration that backed the US-led Iraq war was voted out of power.
After a five-month trial that ended in July, a three-judge panel will read out verdicts for 28 people accused of masterminding, carrying out or helping prepare the attacks on four packed commuter trains heading into Madrid from working-class neighbourhoods.
Most of the suspects are young Muslim men of North African origin who allegedly acted out of allegiance to al-Qaida to avenge the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, although Spanish investigators say they did so without a direct order or financing from Osama bin Laden's network.
The defendants also include nine Spaniards, including a woman, charged with supplying stolen dynamite used in the string of rapid-fire explosions.
All 28 say they are innocent.
Prosecutors are seeking sentences of up to 38,976 years for eight lead defendants - 30 years for each of the people killed in the attacks, 18 years each of the wounded, plus more time for other charges.
But the most time anyone can spend in jail is 40 years.
Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.
Seven suspected ringleaders of the attacks, including the operational chief and an ideologue, blew themselves up in a safe house outside Madrid three weeks after the attacks, as special forces who tracked them via cell phone traffic moved in to arrest them.
Of those who stood trial, three are charged with helping orchestrate the attacks.
They include Rabei Osman, a 35-year-old Egyptian who allegedly bragged during a wiretapped phone conversation that the attacks were his idea.
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