A Moroccan man who acted as a police informer and stands accused of supplying explosives used in the March 2004 Madrid train bombings said Tuesday he told police several times about explosives trafficking in the months prior to Spain's worst terror attack.
"I told them. I mentioned all the suspicions I had regarding the explosives," insisted 27-year-old Rafa Zouhier, who faces 20 years in jail for alleged collaboration with a terrorist organisation and transporting explosives.
Prosecutor Javier Zaragoza asked Zouhier if between July 2003 and March 2004 he informed police of the sale of 150 kilos (330 pounds) of explosivos and he insisted he did, contrary to police accounts. "In 2003 I warned that 'these people want to sell 150 kilos.' I told them 1,000 times," Zouhier said.
Zouhier denies any guilt but investigators say he met Jamal Ahmidan, the presumed logistics organiser of the attack and one of seven men who blew themselves up in a police raid three weeks after the attacks, as well as former Spanish miner Jose Emilio Surez Trashorras.
Trashorras, facing murder charges for the 191 blast victims, 1,824 cases of attempted murder and the murder of a policeman killed in the raid in which Ahmidan died, was due to give evidence later Tuesday.
Presiding judge Javier Gomez Bermudez grew increasingly impatient as Zouhier frequently spoke out of turn. The judge last week had already expelled him from the defendants' glass-reinforced chamber saying he was "fed up with his gestures" which included holding up a sign protesting his innocence.
"Please be quiet," Judge Bermudez repeatedly pleaded. Zouhier gave an agitated but forceful defence throughout when asked if he had not colluded in the attack preparations.
"What fault is it of mine, the explosives that went off on the trains? I warned about the explosives," Zouhier said. In all, around 200 kilos of explosive were stolen from a disused mine in northern Spain and around half were placed on four commuter trains targeted in the early-morning Madrid rush hour.
On Monday, as the trial entered its third week, Rabei Ousmane Sayed Ahmed, an alleged ringleader of the bombings, said his voice did not feature in incriminating taped conversations at the heart of the case against him. Ousmane, nicknamed "Mohammed the Egyptian" is accused along with Youssef Belhadj and Hassan El Haski, both of whom also pleaded not guilty last week, of plotting the attacks. Three alleged bombers have also denied guilt. The trial is due to run to July and verdicts are expected in October.