OF SATAN
Audi A3 car was driven into a crowd in the coastal resort of Cambrils. Seven people were injured in the attack, one of whom later died.
The occupants of the car were wearing fake suicide vests and armed with knives and an axe. Four of the five were shot dead by police.
One line of inquiry last night was Mourners where van struck focusing on a 40-year-old preacher, Moroccan-born Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty, who police believe may have died in the bomb factory blast.
His flat in Ripoll, 65 miles from the city, was raided yesterday by armed officers who spent three hours inside.
Police experts are examining DNA to determine whether the imam’s body was one of two found in the debris of the house that blew up.
More than 20 butane gas canisters were found intact in the rubble of the factory as well as the explosive acetone peroxide, or TATP.
The explosive is a favourite with terrorists because it is hard to detect but it is nicknamed Mother of Satan for Muslim woman mourns the high number of accidental explosions it causes.
Shoe bomber Richard Reid tried but failed to detonate a TATP device on a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001.
A tenant renting a room in Es Satty’s flat, named only as Nodir, told police he had not seen the imam since Tuesday.
Nodir said Es Satty told him he was going to Morocco, where he is believed to have a wife and nine children.
Associates of the imam who meet at the Esperanza cafe in Ripoll said he left his post a month ago. A man named Mounir said: “It is a shock to all of us. The imam said he had another job so we don’t know what to think.”
Ripoll mosque president Ali Yassine said he was horrified at suggestions that Es Satty had radicalised the cell in the town, saying: “I cannot be responsible for what happens outside here.”
lewis.panther@trinitymirror.com Angelic Julian with his mum Jumarie