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Spain's Judicial Experiment

Madrid Terror Trial Is Broadcast on the Internet

By Helene Zuber

The trial of the men accused of carrying out the Madrid train bombings in 2004 is being broadcast live on television and the Internet. The Spaniards believe that this type of publicity can help them establish the truth.

When Roberto Gallego begins work, he first takes a look at the "cage" -- an enclosure made of bulletproof glass in which the 18 defendants sit during the trial. How are the men grouped on the benches? What are they wearing? What is the mood of Spain's most-feared prisoners today?

Gallego is a technician with Fujitsu and he has been hired by the Spanish National Court to operate the four cameras that are being used to record the prosecution of Europe's most spectacular terrorism case. In the Madrid trial, which began on Feb. 15, 29 defendants stand accused of involvement in the train bombings that killed 191 and injured 1,824 people on March 11, 2004.

The trial, held in a converted brick building on the grounds of a former exhibition center, is a judicial experiment that is being observed around the globe. A Web site allows viewers to witness, from anywhere in the world, how a Spanish court is dealing with a particularly brutal attack in the global jihad. By going to www.datadiar.tv, anyone can experience how the suspects are seeking to justify their actions and how their attorneys are defending them. It is truly a trial for the world to witness.

'A Dance of Sleepwalkers'

The image that Roberto Gallego selects on his mixing console is first sent to TVE, the Spanish state television network, which then distributes the signal to anyone interested in a direct feed. That amounts to millions of curious onlookers throughout Spain. In addition to a few regional and private broadcasters, Datadiar, a specialized Internet portal for the legal profession, is streaming the entire terrorism trial. Internet users elsewhere, including the United States, Peru, Germany and even Pakistan, are viewing the direct transmission -- and by last week the site had already tracked 6 million page impressions.

The virtual audience is there when Rabei Osman Ahmed, nicknamed "Mohammed the Egyptian," the attackers' suspected ideologue, operates his remote control for Arab translation and insists: "I am completely innocent." They can also listen to the heart-wrenching stories of the survivors of the attack. For example, they can hear the testimony of a 21-year-old Spaniard who suffered three episodes of cerebral apoplexy and lost his hearing: "I saw people running around. It was like a dance of sleepwalkers."

Julio López, a TV journalist by profession, has been working for Datadiar for the past seven years. He sits at a small, mobile broadcasting unit in the press room, located in the basement of the court building. López encodes the official image he has received and, with a 20-second delay, posts it on the Internet. This is just enough time to add the text at the bottom of the screen identifying speakers and providing additional information. By now many online media outlets, domestic and foreign, have joined legal Web sites in including a link to the trial via Datadiar.

A Tug-of-War over the Truth

Wearing black silk robes trimmed with wide bands of lace, the presiding judge and two other judges attempt, in public, to illuminate the still confusing background of the bombings. What was it like when the ten bombs exploded, minutes apart, on four commuter trains shortly before they entered the Atocha central train station? About 10,000 relatives of the victims were directly affected by the bombings. The courtroom isn't big enough to hold all these people, nor is a basement room set up specifically for victims and their families, complete with five plasma-screen TVs and a team of psychologists and doctors to help the traumatized. There is a lot at stake in this trial: The public prosecutor's office has called for each of the seven principal attackers to be sentenced to 38,667 years in prison.

The public is most fascinated by the tug-of-war over the truth that is taking place in this courtroom. The attacks and the search for the attackers have divided Spain. The conservative government of then Prime Minister José María Aznar was voted out of office only three days after the bloody attacks of March 11. The Aznar government tried to convince the public that ETA, the Basque terrorist organization, had blown up the commuter trains, even when the police and intelligence agencies already had clear evidence that the attackers were Islamist terrorists. José Luis Rodrigúez Zapatero and his Socialist Party won the election on March 14, 2004.