Ten men who were jailed this week for their role in the 2004 Madrid train bombings have gone on hunger strike to protest against their sentences, a spokesman for the Spanish prison authorities said today.
On Wednesday, a Spanish court found 21 men guilty of involvement in the bombings, which killed 191 people, and sentenced three of them to thousands of years in prison.
The rest were given up to 23 years in jail, which in most cases was far less than the state attorney had asked for.
Jamal Zougam and Othman el Gnaoui, who were both sentenced to almost 43,000 years in prison, were among the 10 mostly Moroccan prisoners on hunger strike, the spokesman said. The figures are academic as under Spanish law nobody can serve more than 40 years in jail.
"They didn't all start at once. Some didn't have breakfast yesterday, others started at lunch and some at supper," he added. The prisoners are spread across four jails.
During the court hearings, 14 of the 28 people standing trial went on hunger strike for a few days, protesting that media and political pressure was affecting the trial.