Barcelona cell planned big bomb attack
An alleged member of an Islamist group that carried out the Barcelona van attack told a Spanish court on Tuesday that the group had been planning a much bigger strike using explosives, a judicial source said.
The testimony to a closed hearing at Spain’s High Court came from Mohamed Houli Chemlal, one of four detained suspects brought to Madrid to testify for the first time in court about the plot.
Chemlal was arrested after being hurt in a blast at a house in Alcanar, southwest of Barcelona, a day before Thursday’s van attack on the crowded Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona which killed 13 people.
Tuesday’s court hearing was the first in a long legal process, and it could be months or even years before the case is brought to a full trial.
The four are the only alleged members of the group still alive after the driver of the van in Barcelona, 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub, was shot and killed by police on Monday.
The van careered along Las Ramblas last Thursday, leaving a trail of 13 dead and 120 injured from 34 countries.
A Moroccan imam believed to have radicalized youths who committed a pair of terror attacks in Spain was confirmed dead on Monday in an accidental explosion at the suspects’ bomb factory, police said.
Asked whether Abdelbaki Es Satty had died in the blast on Wednesday that precipitated the attacks, Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero said: “It is confirmed,” adding, “the remains of the imam were there” in the house in Alcanar that exploded. Confirmation of Satty’s death on Monday came as cops shot dead Younes Abouyaaqoub, the suspected van driver.