France investigates why Spanish attack suspects visited Paris this month

The investigation into the terrorist attacks in Catalonia are spreading through Europe.

The French prosecutor said yesterday that at least two members of an Islamist militant cell that killed 15 people in Spain last week had been in Paris prior to the attacks – and it was clearly not merely to indulge in some shopping.

Investigators are looking into whether the suspects in the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks had links to France or Belgium and are examining their movements as they look for connections to possible cells elsewhere in Europe.

The car used in the attack in the seaside resort of Cambrils, south of Barcelona, was caught on camera speeding in the Paris area days earlier.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins confirmed that two or three of the suspects had been in Paris on August 11 and 12 and stayed in a hotel in the south of the city. French media have reported that at one point during the trip one of the militants bought a camera.

“Nobody can believe that this trip was carried out to buy a camera,” Mr Molins said. “We have to find out what they had come to do in France.”

He said the investigation was focusing on who the suspects had met, where they had been and what they bought there.

The Spanish interior minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said France and Spain would continue to reinforce border checks and step up the exchange of information, including real-time information on passengers.

One of the suspects has named an imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, as their ringleader. Es Satty died a day before the Barcelona attack when a house the cell was using as a bomb factory blew up.

Court officials in Spain’s Valencia region said that Spain had issued an expulsion order against Es Satty after he served a four-year jail term for drugs-trafficking but that this was annulled after the imam appealed against the ruling.