Madrid bombing suspect pleads guilty
From Al Goodman CNN
 |  The Madrid massacre was the worst attack against a Western country since September 11 attacks in U.S. |
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 Video of the March 11 bombing of a Madrid commuter train. (Viewer discretion advised)
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MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A 16-year-old boy pleaded guilty Tuesday to carrying explosives used in the Madrid terror bombings that killed 191 people.
He was sentenced to six years in a juvenile detention center and five years probation.
The brief court session marked the first trial in connection with the March 11 attacks. The boy, whose identity was not disclosed, was shielded by a screen in the high-security courtroom.
As his hearing got under way about 30 minutes late in a basement courtroom, charges were read out accusing the teen of transporting explosives used in the attacks and collaborating with a terrorist group.
Officials said the boy grew up in a poor, broken family in Aviles, near the mining region of northern Spain.
A friend of the teenager, former miner Jose Emilio Suarez, is charged with providing dynamite to the terrorists.
Prosecutors said Suarez gave the juvenile a backpack filled with 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of dynamite and paid him $1,200 to deliver the explosives to Jamal Ahmidan -- a Moroccan and a suspected ringleader of the attacks -- in Madrid.
Prosecutors say the two men, along with two other Moroccans, stole the explosives from a mine less than two weeks before the bombings.
The juvenile was said to have waited while the others filled backpack after backpack with explosives.
The Associated Press reported that the boy said he had acted unknowingly.
But, according to a court document, the boy knew exactly what was going on.
Prosecutors had sought eight years' imprisonment for the boy for his role in Spain's worst terrorist attack.
Locals of the mining region are bewildered over the incident. "There wasn't much control of the explosives at the mine," one housewife told CNN.
"I thought there would have been a lot more vigilance," a truck driver added.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
