Madrid - Spain's National Court on Tuesday handed three military officers prison terms of up to three years for misidentifying 30 of the 62 soldiers who died in the worst air crash in the history of Spanish peacekeeping missions, judicial sources said. The Russian-made Yak-42 charter plane crashed into a mountainous area in north-western Turkey as it was bringing peacekeepers home from Afghanistan in May 2003.
The 62 soldiers and 13 Ukrainian and Belarussian crew were killed.
Many families were given the wrong sets of remains, which were exhumed later for a correct identification.
General Vicente Navarro, who headed the military medical team responsible for the identifications in Turkey, was sentenced to three years in prison for falsifying documents.
He was also handed a fine of 1,800 euros (2,440 dollars) and barred from office for two years. His defence was expected to appeal the sentence.
Commander Jose Ramirez and captain Miguel Saez were sentenced to 18 months in prison, and to pay fines of 900 euros each. The Defence Ministry was ordered to pay damages to those affected.
The court said Navarro had deliberately "falsified the truth."
Prosecutors had maintained that Navarro intentionally assigned random names to the remains of 30 victims because he was under pressure from the government to repatriate the bodies in time for a state funeral a few days later.
The accused blamed the mistakes on Turkish forensic experts and authorities.
But two Turkish experts testifying at the trial maintained that the Spaniards were in a hurry to fly the bodies home, and did not perform DNA tests on all the remains.
Victims' families expressed disappointment over the absence of then defence minister Federico Trillo and prime minister Jose Maria Aznar at the trial. The court had decided it was not necessary to summon them as witnesses.
Lawyers representing the victims said Navarro and the two others had only carried out orders given on a higher level.
The air crash raised questions about the security of eastern European-made military aircraft and weakened Aznar's conservative government.
