http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/18/wmadrid18.xm l
Terror suspect claimed compensation payout for daughter's bomb death By Graham Keeley in Madrid Last Updated: 12:25am GMT 18/02/2007 According to the heart-rending account set out in his compensation claim, Abdennari Essebar was just another victim of the indiscriminate brutality of Islamic terrorism. A Moroccan-born resident of Spain, his stepdaughter Sanae, 13, was one of dozens of Muslims killed in the al-Qaeda train bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004, which claimed 191 lives and left nearly 2,000 injured in Europe's worst terrorist atrocity. In his official statement to the authorities, Essebar, 41, told how he frantically searched for Sanae among the wounded in Madrid's overflowing hospitals, only to learn that she had suffered fatal injuries. Yet as officials in Madrid processed his claim for £267,000 - the standard award to parents who lost a child in the bombings - routine police checks devised to screen out fraudsters raised suspicions of a different kind. Leads thrown up during the frenzied manhunt for the bombers suggested that while Essebar might well have been a doting parent, he was also involved in the same kind of Islamic fanaticism that had claimed his stepdaughter's life. After investigations which included secretly tape-recording his telephone conversations, detectives arrested the former civil servant on suspicion of helping to recruit suicide bombers for the anti-American terror in Iraq. He is alleged to have carried out his duties on behalf of a terrorist cell before and after the death of his daughter. Last week, as the trial began of 29 people accused of the bombings, Essebar languished in jail, awaiting his trial that is due to begin later this year. Yet his wife, Jamilah Ben Salah, who was Sanae's natural mother, says her husband could not have been involved in the sort of activity that would have harmed his "beloved" daughter. Fighting back tears as she protested his innocence during an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, she said: "It's impossible my husband would have worked with terrorists. "He was good friends with my daughter. Though she was not his daughter, he thought of her as his own. He taught her English. They played on the computer. Do you think if he had anything to do with this I would be going to see him every week in prison?" She spoke as the trial of the bombers, which opened on Thursday at a maximum security court on the outskirts of Madrid was hearing the first testimony in proceedings that are expected to last up to five months. Psychologists were on hand to help survivors and victims' relatives cope with the trauma of reliving the terrorist attack, in which they have come face to face with the alleged plotters for the first time. If found guilty, seven defendants face sentences of almost 40,000 years each for planning and carrying out the attacks. Essebar, who was a civil servant in the transport department in Morocco, met his wife in 2002. They married soon afterwards and moved to Spain. A little later, Essebar became deeply religious, joining the established Islamic community in Madrid that is peopled mainly by Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians. Police arrested Essebar after they established alleged links to another Moroccan said to be involved in terrorism. Transcripts of tapes made by police of conversations between Essebar and the second man were obtained by the Spanish investigative magazine Interviu. They allegedly reveal Essebar talking with his accomplice about committing a suicide bombing in Iraq, in which police allege Iraq is referred to in code as "France" and the suicide bombing referred to as "working as a taxi driver". In one extract, Essebar allegedly says: "You want to go to France?" His accomplice replies: "If God wants. I don't like building. Working as a taxi driver is better." Essebar has denied the charges. So far, however, his wife's public pleas of innocence appear to have fallen on deaf ears in Spain, where the scale of the bombings has left a lasting sense of national trauma. She said that despite her own bereavement, she had been shunned by support networks set up to help victims of the attack. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
