Four suspected Barcelona attack plotters appear in court
MADRID — Four men accused of being members of an extremist cell behind a van attack that killed 13 people in Barcelona last week appeared in court on Tuesday, a day after the alleged driver was shot dead by police.
The four, the only ones still alive among the 12 men thought to constitute the group, were brought from Barcelona to Madrid and arrived at the High Court, which deals with terrorism cases, in a convoy of police vehicles with sirens wailing.
Spanish media have named the suspects as Driss Oukabir, Mohammed Aalla, Salh el Karib and Mohamed Houli Chemal. Police have not yet confirmed their names.
Police on Monday shot dead 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub, who they had identified as the driver of the van that careered along the packed Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona on Thursday, leaving a trail of 13 dead and 120 injured from 34 countries.
After the attack, Abouyaaqoub escaped on foot, stabbing to death a man who was parking his car and fleeing in the vehicle.
Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia said on Tuesday he walked about 40 kilometers from Sant Just Desvern, a town on the outskirts of Barcelona where he ditched the hijacked car, to Subirats, where he was shot dead.
Abouyaaqoub, who had changed clothes, walked by night and hid during the day, the paper said, citing sources involved in the investigation.
Carlos Mundo, the top justice official in the Catalan government, said police were investigating whether Abouyaaqoub had any support while on the run. “It is clear that he must have had some form of logistics,” he told Catalonia Radio.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the van attack and a separate deadly assault, hours later, in the coastal resort of Cambrils, south of Barcelona.
In Cambrils, a car rammed into passers-by and its occupants got out and tried to stab people. The five assailants, who were wearing what turned out to be fake explosive belts, were shot dead by police, while a Spanish woman died in the attack.
In little more than a year, extremists have used vehicles as weapons to kill nearly 130 people in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Spain.
Most of the 12 suspects lived in the town of Ripoll, set in forested hills beneath the Pyrenees north of Barcelona near the French border, and most were young men of Moroccan descent.
Catalan police said on Monday that, while all 12 of the suspects they were looking for were accounted for, an investigation into whether the cell had international links would go on.