THREE BASQUES CONVICTED IN 2006 MADRID AIRPORT BOMBING
Baku, May 22 (AZERTAC). Three members of Basque separatist group ETA were convicted Friday of a 2006 bombing that destroyed a Madrid airport parking garage and killed two people in an attack that shattered a cease-fire.
The three men were each given 1,040 prison sentences. Spain frequently hands down lengthy sentences in terrorism cases although they are mostly symbolic because the maximum jail sentence a person can serve for a terrorism conviction is 40 years.
The National Court found the three men guilty of murder, attempted murder and taking part in a terror attack in connection with the Dec. 30, 2006 explosion at Madrid`s Barajas airport. The blast destroyed a five-story parking garage, killing two Ecuadorean immigrants and wounding 41 other people.
ETA later claimed responsibility for the attack, which marked the end of the cease-fire that the group had begun nine months earlier.
The three were ordered to pay euro1.2 million ($1.48 million) in compensation to the families of the two Ecuadoreans.
ETA is seeking an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France. Considered a terrorist organization by the European Union and the U.S., the group has killed more than 825 people since the late 1960s.
The group declared a cease-fire in March 2006 but reverted to violence in a matter of months after peace talks with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero`s government went nowhere.
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