BRINGING CLOSURE: Some of the 28 accused sit in a glass cage (left), awaiting sentencing yesterday, while a policeman stands on guard. On hearing the verdict, which was broadcast on Spanish TV, people embraced one another outside the court. -- PHOTOS: REUTERS

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But in a surprise verdict after three months of deliberations, it acquitted one of the alleged masterminds behind the Al-Qaeda-inspired attack that claimed nearly 200 lives.

The sentences brought to a close a trial that lasted 41/2 months and featured 350 witnesses.

They also offered the first taste of justice to those wounded in the attacks, as well as relatives of those killed when 13 sports bags stuffed with explosives tore through trains carrying hundreds of people from mainly working-class suburbs to the city centre on March 11 three years ago.

Yesterday, Chief Judge Javier Gomez Bermudez pronounced Moroccans Jamal Zougam and Othman el-Gnaoui and Spaniard Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras guilty of murdering the 191 people killed in the blasts.

Zougam was one of the first suspects arrested, after police traced the SIM data card of a mobile phone attached to a bomb that did not explode to a shop he ran. He was convicted of placing at least one bomb on one of the trains.

Trashorras, a former miner, was found guilty of supplying the explosives used in the attacks.

El-Gnaoui was accused of being the right-hand man of the plot's operational chief.

They were sentenced to around 40,000 years in prison each, although under Spanish law, the maximum they can spend behind bars is 40 years.

However, Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, also known as 'Mohammed the Egyptian', who was accused of heading a terrorist organisation and helping to orchestrate the attacks, was acquitted on all charges.

Osman, who is in jail in Italy, had allegedly bragged in a wire-tapped phone conversation that the massacre was his idea, but his defence argued successfully that the tapes were mistranslated.

Sentences of fewer than 20 years were handed to two other alleged ringleaders, who were found guilty of belonging to a terrorist organisation.

Seven other suspected ringleaders, including the alleged operational chief, were never tried, as they blew themselves up in a house outside Madrid three weeks after the massacre, as special forces moved in to arrest them.

During the trial, which started on Feb 15 and concluded on July 2, all 28 defendants - 19 North African Arabs living in Spain and nine Spaniards - had denied the charges and any link to radical Muslim organisations, but seven were found not guilty.

The announcement of the three-judge panel's verdict was broadcast live on Spanish TV and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero welcomed the verdicts, saying: 'Today, justice was done and we must now look to the future, strengthening co-existence.'

The bombings traumatised a nation familiar with terrorism after four decades of attacks by the Basque militant group ETA, and changed the course of Spanish politics.

The conservative government in power at the time had looked set to win another term, but made the mistake of initially blaming the attacks on the ETA.

Then, a day before the elections, the discovery of a video tape in Arabic near a Madrid mosque which claimed the attacks on behalf of 'Al-Qaeda's military spokesman in Europe' was discovered.

This led to charges that the government had attempted a cover-up to deflect attention away from its unpopular support for the Iraq War, and helped the socialists to a surprise victory.

Mr Zapatero promptly fulfilled a campaign promise to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.

NEW YORK TIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESS, ASSOCIATED PRESS