Europe's biggest trial against suspected followers of al-Qaeda, the Islamist terrorist network, ended its first week in Madrid with the 24 defendants vigorously protesting their innocence.

Syrian-born Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, the prime suspect in the trial and alleged leader of an al-Qaeda cell in Spain, told the court he condemned terrorism because “Islam does not allow it”. Mr Yarkas, who faces charges of mass murder for the September 11 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, denied helping to prepare a meeting of the attacks' conspirators in July 2001, when Mohamed Atta, one of the suicide pilots, travelled to Spain.