This article titled “Cannabis clubs plug a gap in Spanish drugs laws” was written by Giles Tremlett in Paracuellos de Jarama, for The Guardian on Tuesday 28th December 2010 17.19 UTC

The sign on the door says it all, but the acrid smell and smoke wafting across the Private Cannabis Club in the Madrid dormitory town of Paracuellos de Jarama are proof that it lives up to its name. “This is the one place we can smoke in peace,” said a punter at the bar, mixing tobacco and dried, shredded cannabis leaf in a long rolling paper.

The Private Cannabis Club, with its palmate green leaves stencilled on the walls and the club’s name etched on to smoked windowpanes, is at the vanguard of a new movement of pro-cannabis campaigners in Spain. The members spotted a gap in Spain’s drugs laws which, they say, makes the activities of private clubs like these entirely legal.

The spacious Paracuellos de Jarama club, in a former restaurant in a town overlooking Madrid’s Barajas airport, is equipped with a bar, kitchen, billiard tables and TV screens. It is the most sophisticated of up to 40 cannabis clubs that have sprung up in garages and back rooms around Spain since campaigners worked out that laws making it illegal to consume in public did not apply to private, member-only, clubs.

“We’ve been open for two months and we already have 125 members,” said the association’s president, Pedro Álvaro Zamora. Those members pay €120 a year to belong and Zamora and his companions follow rules that seem similar to those of exclusive Mayfair clubs. A sign by the doorbell warns that only members are admitted and a committee vets new applicants, blackballing some. Alicia Méndez, a club official, said: “Potential members are interviewed and we do not accept everyone. Our members have to be responsible people, have the right profile.”

Zamora said: “This is not Amsterdam, this is not a coffee shop. This is our association’s club house and it is a private place. It is not open for everyone.”

Spain does not have a law banning consumption in private and members claim it is safer to use the club than go out to parks and smoke in public. Zamora said: “The club recognises that cannabis is not good for everyone. We propose a responsible form of consumption. Not everyone should smoke. We know there are risks.” Club members can bring their own cannabis or share in the club’s own stock. They can even take some away as long as they sign for it and the cannabis is for personal consumption.

Although the club house, which is registered with the local authorities, is left alone by police, members can get into trouble if caught carrying cannabis. “It is illegal to buy, sell or transport, so you can be fined if caught with it on you.” The club offers legal help to fined members.

Supplying the club is another problem, as dealing in cannabis is illegal.

“We are fighting for the legal right to grow it,” said Zamora. The club applied for a medical licence to cultivate cannabis but was turned down. Then police raided its secret plantation and destroyed the plants. Zamora said they would challenge in court the right to destroy a plantation devoted to supplying a private club: “We are people who work and pay taxes. We are not delinquents.”

Some judges have ordered police to give confiscated cannabis back to clubs. “They have told them to return it on the basis that there is no threat to public health.”

Zamora stressed that the club’s suppliers did not belong to the drugs underworld: “We don’t go to the black market to buy. We know farmers who cultivate cannabis and can provide us.”

The club also campaigns on laws. “Prohibition does not work. Cannabis has been consumed for centuries and will continue to be … for centuries. Prohibition creates an illegal market and all that brings with it. It’s better to educate people than spend money on prohibition that fails.”

• this article was amended on 4 January 2011. The original referred to Paraceullos de Jarama. This has been corrected.

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This is what happens when you treat terrorism like a law enforcement matter and use civilian courts.

A Spanish court absolved four men and upheld the acquittal of a fifth on Thursday in the convoluted legal proceedings relating to the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombings that killed 191 people in the deadliest attack by Islamic militants on European soil.

The rulings followed appeals of some of 21 convictions by a lower court after a five-month trial that ended in October. Seven other people were acquitted at that time.

Most dramatically, the court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of one of the bombing’s accused masterminds, Rabei Osman, an Egyptian, who was found guilty in 2006 in Italy of belonging to a terrorist organization.

Mr. Osman was arrested in Italy in June 2004, but disputed prosecution evidence citing wiretaps in which he was purported to have said he had conceived the idea of the attacks.

After all the dust settled, 3 of the 4 masterminds of the horrific Madrid train bombings were aquitted. The only person who wasn’t aquitted was the guy who provided the explosives and he only received a 4-year sentence.

Terrorism experts said that verdict illustrated the difficulty of building a solid case against suspected Islamists when they belong to a diffuse group with local foot soldiers and no formal structure.

It’s a mistake to rely on a civilian legal system to try complex terror cases. Denial of habeas corpus rights, indefinite detention at a secret military facility, and eventually a military tribunal, is the correct way to handle these killers.

It’s inconceivable that 3 of the 4 masterminds of such a savage attack were acquitted. Those men are responsible for 191 deaths and more than 1,800 injured when they blew up four commuter trains simultaneously in Madrid, Spain on March 11, 2004.

(hat tip to Michelle)

A new resolution that extends rights to apes has been submitted to the Spanish parliament and is expected to become law.

The new law will grant apes the right to life and freedom, and it will mark the first time that any national legislature has granted such rights to any non-human.

Once the new law goes in to effect, it will be illegal to keep apes for circuses, television commercials, or filming. The estimated 315 apes that are currently being kept in Spanish zoo’s will be allowed to remain there, but drastic improvements in living conditions for the animals will be required.

Any type of medical testing on apes will also be banned in Spain, although the Spanish government says it’s not aware of any such testing currently being done on apes in Spain.

As over-the-top as some of this sounds, I don’t really think it’s such a bad idea. I think this new law goes a bit far, but I certainly don’t think banning apes from performing in circuses is a bad thing.

The intelligence of apes is absolutely astounding and the way humans typically treat them is very unfortunate. I realize that for the human race to continue we have to be able to test new drugs on something. Apes are our closest living relatives, so it simply has to be done.

Outside of what must be done in the name of medical science, I think we should treat apes and other primates with more respect than we have in the past.

MADRID, Spain (AP) – A judge indicted three U.S. soldiers Friday in the 2003 death of a Spanish journalist who was killed when their tank opened fire at a hotel in Baghdad. Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp were charged with homicide in the death of Jose Couso and “a crime against the international community.” This is defined under Spanish law as an indiscriminate or excessive attack against civilians during war.

At the time of the incident, all were from the 3rd Infantry Division, based in Fort Stewart, Ga. Judge Santiago Pedraz asked U.S. authorities to notify them of the indictment.

Couso, who worked as a cameraman for the Spanish TV network Telecinco, died on April 8, 2003, after a U.S. Army tank crew fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel, where many journalists were staying. Taras Portsyuk, a Ukrainian cameraman for Reuters, was also killed.

Following the incident, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said the troops responded after drawing hostile fire from the hotel. He said a U.S. review of the incident found the use of force was justified.

According to the five-page indictment, DeCamp ordered the shot, and Wolford then authorized Gibson to carry it out.

“The people indicted knew and were aware that the Palestine Hotel was occupied by civilians, without there being a proved threat (sniper or otherwise) against themselves or the U.S troops, therefore, the tank shot that caused the death of Mr. Couso would constitute an attack, retaliation, or violence threat or act aimed at terrifying journalists,” the indictment said.

DeCamp, who is now an adjunct professor of mathematics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., did not immediately return a telephone message left at his home. The school said he retired from the Army in July 2005.

Pedraz has issued several arrest warrants against the three, but the United States has made clear it will not hand them over.

The three men still run the risk of arrest under a Spanish-issued international warrant should they travel to any country that has an extradition treaty with Spain.

Under Spanish law, a crime committed against a Spaniard abroad can be prosecuted here if it is not investigated in the country where it was allegedly committed.

In a separate case in Italy that has strained relations between Washington and Rome, former Spc. Mario Lozano, 37, of New York City went on trial in absentia earlier this month for the shooting death of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Iraq two years ago.

The agent, Nicola Calipari, was shot March 4, 2005, on his way to the Baghdad airport shortly after securing the release of a kidnapped Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena. Sgrena and another agent who was driving the car were wounded.

Lozano, who was indicted in February on charges of murder and attempted murder, has defended his actions in comments to the U.S. media, saying he had no choice but to fire. He says he flashed a warning light signaling the vehicle to stop and that he shot first at the ground, and then at the car’s engine.

The judge has adjourned the proceedings until May 14 for technical reasons.

Also in Italy, prosecutors in February indicted 26 Americans, all but one believed to be CIA agents, accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003.

Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, suspected of recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes, was flown to Egypt as part of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, and he was held in a prison where he has said he was tortured.

The 26 Americans have left Italy, and U.S. official have said they would not be turned over for prosecution even if Rome requests it. The trial is expected to start in June.

Resistance to the war in Iraq ran high in both Spain and Italy.

Spain was the scene of major protests before and during the early months of the U.S.-led invasion, with huge demonstrations in Barcelona and Madrid.

[Breitbart]