Barcelona attack suspect shot dead
MADRID (AFP) — Spanish police shot dead Barcelona terror suspect Younes Abouyaaqoub, in a dramatic end to a massive manhunt for the Moroccan national who was wearing a fake suicide belt and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) when he was killed.
The Moroccan was the last remaining member of a 12-man cell suspected of plotting last week’s deadly vehicle rampages in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils that were claimed by the Islamic State organization — its first in Spain.
Four days after the van rampage on the tourist-packed Las Ramblas boulevard, police caught up with the 22-year-old Abouyaaqoub in the village about 60 kilometers west of Barcelona, after receiving multiple tip-offs.
Arnau Gomez, who lives about a kilometer away from where the suspect was shot, described the village of 300 people as being an ideal hideout as “it is far from everything.”
“In the hills there are many homes of seasonal workers, it’s easy to hide,” he told AFP.
Abouyaaqoub’s hometown Ripoll, where many of the suspects grew up or lived, Moroccan factory worker Hassan Azzidi said he was “happy and sad all at once” that the suspect had been gunned down.
“This had to end, because we’re living as if in a war, but at the same time, someone brainwashed such a young boy,” he said.
On Monday, police vans under heavy security entered the National Court, which deals with terrorism cases, where a judge will decide what — if any — charges to press against the four remaining suspects in the vehicle attacks that left 15 dead and 120 injured.
The rest of the suspects were killed either by police or in an explosion believed to have been accidentally detonated by the suspects themselves in their bomb factory in the seaside town of Alcanar.
Among those killed in the explosion was a Moroccan imam at the heart of the cell, Abdelbaki Es Satty, Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero confirmed Monday.
In total, 15 people died in the attacks including Pau Perez, a 34-year-old man found stabbed to death in a Ford Focus outside Barcelona on Friday after Abouyaaqoub hijacked his car to make a getaway.
Investigators seeking to unravel the terror cell had homed in on the small border town of Ripoll at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains in northeastern Spain.
Satty, aged in his 40s, came under scrutiny as he is believed to have radicalized youths in Ripoll.
Police said the imam had spent time in prison and had once been in contact with a suspect wanted on terrorism charges but was never himself charged with terror-related incidents.
In Belgium, the mayor of the Vilvorde region told AFP that Satty spent time in the Brussels suburb of Machelen — next to the city’s airport — between January and March 2016.
In the Moroccan town of M’rirt, relatives of Abouyaaqoub have accused the imam of radicalizing the young man as well as his brother Houssein.