Europe’s first major trial of suspected Al-Qaeda members, which ended in Spain yesterday, has been been angrily condemned as a flop by the Spanish press.

The daily La Razon today complained of "a sense of failure in not being able to prove a direct link between the accused and the September 11 attacks", after the Spanish High Court handed down verdicts on 24 suspected Al-Qaeda members, including three accused of helping the September 11, 2001, hijackers.

Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, alias Abu Dahdah, a Syrian-born businessman accused of being the leader of Al-Qaeda in Spain, was sentenced to 27 years in jail - 12 for being the leader of a terrorist group and 15 for conspiracy to commit terrorist murder.

The Barcelona daily La Vanguardia said: "The sentence, way below that sought by the state attorney, is a blow to the judicial investigation and the prosecution."

Yarkas was accused of helping prepare a meeting on July 16, 2001, in Tarragona, northeast Spain, at which prosecutors said the September 11 attacks may have been planned. The court ruled that prosecutors had not proved that Yarkas took part in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, but there was evidence he had helped to think up the plot, working with a radical cell in Hamburg.

Prosecutors had demanded a sentence of over 74,000 years for Yarkas and two other defendants, Moroccan-born Driss Chebli and Syrian-born Ghasoub al Abrash Ghalyoun, whom they accused of playing a role in the September 11 attacks.

The three could have faced jail sentences of more than 74,000 years each if convicted of involvement in the attacks. Six of the defendants were acquitted on all counts, including Ghalyoun.

El Mundo cast doubt on the case made by the Spanish prosecutors. It said there was no doubt that most of those convicted "formed part of a group dedicated to making propaganda for the jihad, financing fundamentalist Islamic movements, recruiting fanatics for Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan and maintaining contacts with the Algerian GIA and other violent groups."

But it added: "It is another thing to try to connect this group with the preparations for September 11, which was the basis for reopening this investigation at the end of October 2001."

The paper said one problem was that the court’s argument regarding Yarkas’ role in September 11 rested on "two weak pieces of circumstantial evidence". One was that his number was found in the phonebook of a person who had lived with Mohammed Atta, the plot leader. The other was a tapped phone conversation that Yarkas allegedly had in which another person talks of entering "the aviation business".

To consider this a reference to September 11 was "a flight of fantasy for anyone with common sense, and raises immense doubts about the seriousness of the verdict," El Mundo said.

Meanwhile the pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera said that it would appeal against the conviction of its TV reporter, Tayssir Alluni, who was jailed for seven years for collaborating with a terrorist organisation. While working for the station in Afghanistan in 2001, Alluni secured an interview with Osama bin Laden.

His wife Fatima Zahra told reporters after the sentencing: "My husband has been sent down for telling the truth... for doing his job. And he would do the same again."

Al-Jazeera’s director general Waddah Khanfar, talking to AFP, described the verdict as very disappointing. "We still believe our colleague Tayssir is innocent of the charges against him," he said.

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