Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Give yourself up, mum urges fugitive terrorist
THE mother of the jihadi suspected of driving the van into pedestrians on Las Ramblas has begged her son to hand himself in.
Ghanno Gaanimi yesterday appealed to Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, Europe’s most wanted man.
She said: “He must go to the police, he must hand himself in. He is better off in prison than dead.”
French police have joined the hunt for him after reports that a white Renault Kangoo he hired on Thursday had crossed the border from Spain.
Police believe Moroccan-born Abouyaaqoub had earlier driven another van into the crowds on Las Ramblas after a plan to cause a massive butane gas blast was thwarted when the terror cell’s bomb factory blew up.
Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero yesterday said there had been no reports of suspicious activity at the house in Alcanar, 125 miles southwest of Barcelona, until the blast on Wednesday. Two of the 12 suspected terrorists are thought to have died in the explosion. One of those killed may have been Abdelbaki Es Satty, the local imam. Police have searched a flat belonging to him for DNA to verify whether he died. He is being blamed for radicalising 12 young men from the town of Ripoll.
Five of them were shot dead by police after a second car rampage on Thursday killed one woman in the seaside resort of Cambrils.
Abouyaaqoub’s cousin Fatima said: “Most of people think that the imam is guilty. They were normal guys and since he arrived they got more into religion.”
Es Satty’s flatmate claimed the preacher told him he “was leaving for Morocco” two days before the Barcelona attack.
Two of those killed in Cambrils were Omar Hychami, 21 and his brother Mohamed, 24. Their father Hechami Gasi said: “I don’t know what they did to my boys’ heads. I can assure you they were good, normal boys.”
Yesterday armed police were searching all cars entering Ripoll, in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
Meanwhile the Spanish press said Moussa Oukabir, 17, another of those shot dead in Cambrils, had travelled to Morocco to “say goodbye” to his family days before the atrocity. And a car used in the Cambrils attack was caught speeding about a week earlier in Paris, it was reported.