The lost boy of Barcelona
Hope fades for missing 7-year-old boy as police admit jihadi van driver is STILL on the loose
‘Looking at the pictures, I fear the worst’ ‘I can’t stop crying... it was somebody’s child’
THE family of a seven-year-old boy caught up in the horror of the Barcelona carnage faced an agonising wait last night to learn if he had survived.
Julian Cadman’s father, Andrew, arrived in Spain last night after flying from his home in Australia to seek information from police after the boy was officially described as ‘missing’.
The boy’s mother Jumarie – known as Jom – was still in hospital last night with serious injuries.
Mr Cadman’s wife and son were in Spain for a family wedding when they were caught up in the van attack on Las Ramblas. A poignant photograph of the youngster was taken just days before in the UK. His father, a 42-year-old cabinet maker, only found out about the attack on the radio. Last night, as Mr Cadman visited the city morgue, where the bodies of victims of the atrocity are being held, Julian’s family were bracing themselves for the worst. Social media appeals for information on the youngster were taken down yesterday.
As the family’s ordeal continued, it emerged:
Jihadis had planned to use a volatile explosive known as the ‘Mother of Satan’ to murder hundreds of people in a ‘spectacular’ terror attack, even more devastating than Thursday’s atrocity in which 13 people were killed and more than 130 injured;
A huge international manhunt codenamed Operation Cage continued for the driver of the van, who is believed to be the final member of the terror cell;
Police were last night investigating an Islamic preacher over his possible involvement;
The youngest victim of the Las Ramblas attack was named yesterday as Javier Martinez, three, who died alongside his great-uncle Francisco Lopez Rodriguez. The alleged van driver, Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, and originally from Mrirt in Morocco, is thought to be the only member of the IS cell still on the run. In a day of fastmoving developments, the Cadmans’ extended family endured the agony of conflicting media reports on whether Julian was found or missing, alive or dead.
‘We have had the television on constantly since it happened,’ said Norma Canaveral, who affectionately calls the boy ‘my grandson’ although she is his great-aunt. ‘We’ve been on Facebook and looking on the internet for anything that might give us hope that Julian is all right,’ she said. One image from the attack has stayed with her – it shows a young boy, limbs horribly askew and apparently lifeless, on Las Ramblas in the aftermath of the outrage.
‘It was so shocking to see that picture – it looks like Julian,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping and praying that it’s not, but it looks very like him. And lying near to him is a woman who definitely looks like Jumarie. Looking at this picture, I definitely fear the worst.’
Mrs Canaveral’s son Warlito, 30, and daughter Christabel, 28, have been frantically calling relatives who had travelled to Barcelona for the family wedding. ‘They haven’t been able to get in touch with anyone – it seems as though everyone’s mobile is switched off after the attack,’ said Mrs Canaveral.
Another close relative of the Cadmans, who asked not to be named, said: ‘We are all desperately worried.’ The family member said Jom was undergoing further operations in hospital. ‘Jom has broken legs, broken arms, a broken hand and facial injuries,’ she said.
Last night police were searching the flat of an Islamic preacher, Abdelbaki Es Satty, for samples of DNA and fingerprints to verify whether he was killed at the bomb factory where the cell had been preparing an attack.
Es Satty, 45, began preaching in the town of Ripoll – where several members of the gang lived – around two years ago but stopped two
months ago, sources at the town’s mosque said. One – possibly two – members of the jihadi cell were killed when their bomb factory at a house in Alcanar, 200km south of Barcelona, blew up on Wednesday.
Five more terrorists were shot dead in Cambrils, a seaside town 112km south-west of Barcelona, in the early hours of Friday as they launched a second attack with axes and knives. It is thought Moussa Oukabir, 17, originally suspected of being the van driver after using his older brother’s identify papers to rent it, was among those shot dead in Cambrils. Four more suspects, including Oukabir’s older brother Driss, 28, are being questioned by detectives and are expected to appear before an investigating magistrate this week. Said Oukabir, the father of the Oukabir brothers, said he was in shock that his sons were suspected of involvement.
They had shown no sign of radicalisation, he said at his home in Melouiya, a village high in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. ‘They lived like the young people of their age, dressed like them,’ he added.
At the same time, countless individual acts of heroism continued to emerge. British tourist Harry Athwal risked his own safety by staying with a badly injured boy
‘I came across a scene of total disaster’
because the child reminded him of his own son. In one of the most poignant images of the outrage, Mr Athwal was pictured kneeling next to the boy in Las Ramblas, despite being warned by police to move away in case there was a second attack. Mr Athwal, 44, said he could not leave the bleeding and apparently lifeless body because he was so like his own eight-year-old son.
In a moving text message sent to his wife, Mr Athwal said: ‘When I look at him I cannot stop crying.’ In another message he added: ‘That was somebody’s child…’
Another person, off-duty nurse Albert Tort Siso, described coming across a scene of ‘total disaster’.
About 4,500 people will travel from Ireland to Barcelona this week – with no drop-off in bookings or cancellations despite the horrific events in the Catalan capital, according to Irish Travel Agents Association CEO Pat Dawson.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has advised anyone planning a trip to Barcelona to get a European Health Insurance Card from the HSE. Holidaymakers should also make use of the department’s travel advice, available at dfa.ie