MOTHER OF SATAN PLOT
THE Barcelona terrorists were plotting a far bigger atrocity – targeting hundreds of innocent victims – using a deadly homemade explosive known as the ‘Mother of Satan’, it emerged last night.
The 12-strong Islamic State cell intended to carry out horrific truck or van bombings at the Sagrada Familia basilica – Barcelona’s most famous landmark – and the city docks as well as Las Ramblas.
But a massive accidental blast on Wednesday destroyed their bomb factory in Alcanar, 120 miles south of Barcelona, killing at least one of the terrorists and throwing their plans into chaos.
Instead they launched a relatively low-tech attack using a van that killed 13 people and injured more than 130 on the packed Las Ramblas promenade in Barcelona on Thursday before a later attack in the early hours of Friday in the resort town of Cambrils.
Investigators sifting through the rubble in Alcanar yesterday found butane gas canisters – as well as traces of the deadly but unstable
‘It’s easy to make – but difficult to control’
homemade explosive tri-acetone tri-peroxide, or TATP, which is about 80% as strong as TNT.
Known as ‘Mother of Satan’, TATP was used in the Tube and bus bombers in London in July 2005 and the May attack this year at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. It was also used in the November 2015 Paris atrocity and the March 2016 Brussels bombings.
TATP is easy to make from overthe-counter items available in any pharmacy, but it is notoriously difficult to control.
It is harder to detect than traditional explosives and was taken on to an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami by failed British ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid in 2001.
His plot was thwarted when a flight attendant spotted him trying to light a fuse to the explosives in his shoes and other passengers subdued him.
One reason TATP is difficult to detect is because it does not contain nitrogen, a key component of homemade ‘fertiliser’ bombs that security scanners are now adept at finding.
One expert described making TATP as being ‘as easy as baking a cake’. However, another added: ‘But it’s easy to blow yourself up while you make it.’
More than 20 butane gas canisters were found intact in the Alcanar wreckage. They would have provided a powerful accelerant following any initial terror attack using TATP.
Major Josep Lluis Trapero, head of Catalonia police, said: ‘The terrorists were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope.’
Security experts believe the gang, now unable to use the explosives as planned, decided to hire a lorry like the one used to devastating effect in the Nice atrocity two years ago, when 86 people were killed and more than 400 injured.
But the Barcelona terrorists were forced to change to a smaller van after they were refused permission to rent a heavy vehicle because they did not have the correct driver’s licence.
One expert warned last night of a wave of copycat killings in the wake of the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks.
On Friday, a knifeman stabbed two people to death in the streets of Turku, Finland. The teenage suspect is Moroccan, just like the Barcelona terrorists. Two people were in a serious condition and several wounded after a similar attack in Russia yesterday.
Raffaello Pantucci, a terrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute in England, said: ‘The biggest worry now is that when you get an attack, you get a spate of copycat attacks in other cities and countries straight away, like stabbings. We’ve seen events in Finland and Russia this weekend. So how do you prepare for these kind of attacks?
‘Also, there is now renewed fears that the North Africa region has become a major hub for terrorists. Intelligence experts have feared that for a while but now there is renewed interest in this area as politicians are taking an interest in it. That area is problematic as there are ungoverned spaces there, and also there are governments that seem to be unable to control the terror threats in their countries.’
A British explosives expert said last night that hundreds of tourists would have been killed in Barcelona had the jihadis been able to detonate their huge homemade bomb as originally planned.
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who commanded the British Army’s specialist chemical and nuclear warfare regiment, described the fact that the terrorists’ plans were thwarted as a ‘huge stroke of luck’.
Col. de Bretton-Gordon said: ‘The house [at Alcanar] was razed to the ground by the blast, which gives us an indication of its power.
‘Had this incident not occurred, the terrorists would in all likelihood have gone through with their bid to set off around 20 gas cylinders in the centre of Barcelona.
‘That would have caused a huge blast, with possibly hundreds killed and wounded by its force and the dissemination of shrapnel from the exploding cylinders and the vehicles used to transport them. For that to go off in a crowded area would have been truly horrific.
‘Just how they got hold of the TATP plastic explosive is unclear. Personally I doubt they had the skill to make it – more likely they purchased it illegally or stole it in Spain. It could have been smuggled back from the Middle East but the explosive has a limited shelf-life and is rather unstable to transport over long distances.’
‘A huge blast would have killed hundreds’