Spain conditionally releases attacks suspect

Dutch police detain suspect in concert terror threat

MADRID, Aug 24, (Agencies): The fourth suspect in last week’s twin attacks in Spain was released Thursday pending further investigation and placed under surveillance, the country’s National Court said.

Salh El Karib, the manager of a store that lets people make calls abroad in Ripoll, a town in northern Catalonia where many of the alleged attackers came from, will have to show up at a local court every week and is banned from leaving Spain, the court said in a statement.

Salh El Karib, a 34-year-old Moroccan, is the second of four suspects to have been granted conditional release.

The two others — Mohamed Houli Chemlal, 21, and Driss Oukabir, 28 — were remanded in custody and charged with terror-related offences after being quizzed by a judge at Madrid’s National Court, which deals with cases of extremism.

Authorities are still probing the vehicle attacks in Barcelona’s busy Las Ramblas boulevard last Thursday and in the resort town of Cambrils several hours later. Fifteen people died and more than 120 were injured. According to a court document, credit cards in the name of Salh El Karib were used to buy plane tickets for Oukabir and Abdelbaki Es Satty, the imam believed to be the mastermind of the terror cell. He is now dead.

But the investigation found that the shop he manages sells plane tickets as part of its regular business offering, which means he did not necessarily play a part in the terror cell.

“There is no indication that the detainee had any relationship with the people allegedly involved in the terrorist organisation that is being investigated,” the court document said.

A Belgian policeman told a Catalan colleague in 2016 that the imam believed to be the instigator of last week’s attack in Barcelona was suspicious, but no information was found then to link him to Islamist militancy, a source told Reuters.

Independence

Several Spanish media accused Catalan police on Thursday of failing to properly investigate the Moroccan imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty. Meanwhile a wider blame game is being played out between central authorities in Madrid and officials in Catalonia, whose leaders are pushing for independence from Spain.

The tip-off about the imam was made informally between two police officials from Belgium and Catalonia who knew each other, a source in Catalonia’s regional government said.

“The communication between the two policemen was not official. They knew each other because they had met in a police seminar,” the source said, on condition of anonymity.

Police records, however, had turned up nothing on the cleric. “The documents show that we had no information about the imam,” the source said, adding that the only official communication channels of the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, with police in other countries were through Spain’s central government.

The Catalan regional government and Spain’s central government declined to comment.

It remains unclear whether Catalan police made their own attempts to follow up the lead.

platter,” she told business daily Handelsblatt in an interview.

“In the end, he won the election under American electoral law and that means he is democratically elected and that this person should be shown the appropriate respect, regardless of how I assess his views,” she added. (RTRS)

Murder charge sought:

Danish prosecutors said Thursday they will seek a murder charge against the self-built submarine inventor who was last seen with Swedish journalist Kim Wall before her headless torso was found floating off Denmark.

“At latest on September 5, we will try to hold him in custody

The top home affairs official in the Catalan regional government, Joaquim Forn, said on Thursday that Catalan authorities had been unaware of any investigation of the imam or that he could pose a threat, Spanish news agency EFE said.

Es Satty spent around three months in the Belgian town of Vilvoorde, a known centre of Islamist radicalism, between January and March last year.

He later went to Catalonia to be the imam of the small town of Ripoll, where he is suspected of having recruited and radicalised most of the group which carried out last week’s attacks.

Alerted by a detailed tip from Spanish colleagues, Dutch police arrested a 22-year-old man early Thursday and said he was suspected of preparing a “terrorist attack” on a concert by an American rock band.

The arrest in Brabant province, south of Rotterdam, came hours after police cancelled a performance Wednesday night by Los Angeles band Allah-Las at a converted grain silo in the heart of the port city.

“The suspicion is that the suspect is involved in the preparation of a terrorist attack,” Rotterdam Police Chief Frank Paauw said.

“There is no terror threat now anymore,” he added. “There is no threat because we have arrested a suspect and the information about the threat was so specific on the location of the event that, with that arrest, we can conclude that the threat is gone.”

Police searched the man’s home after his arrest but released no details of anything they found. His identity was not released, in line with Dutch privacy guidelines.

Meanwhile, a Spanish mechanic detained Thursday night while driving, apparently drunk, a white van containing a number of gas canisters close to the concert venue was to be questioned once he sobered up, police said.

However, he did not appear to be a terror suspect. Police said a search of his home uncovered nothing to indicate he was linked to the threat. Explosives experts who combed through the van’s contents found a few gas canisters but nothing suspicious, police said.

An increasing number of Finns want the government to get tougher on immigration after last week’s knife attack by a Moroccan asylum seeker that killed two women and wounded eight other people, an opinion poll showed on Thursday.

Friday’s stabbings in the city of Turku have been treated as the first suspected Islamist militant attack in Finland, which boasts one of the lowest crime rates in the world. However, the main suspected has denied terrorism was a motive.

Some 58 percent of Finns want the government to tighten immigration policy and give police and other officials extra powers to prevent future attacks, according to the poll, which was taken after the attack and published by the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.

A similar poll in April showed only 40 percent supported stricter policies.

Finnish police have detained four men and arrested two in connection with the Turku killings. An international arrest warrant has been issued for a fifth.

on a murder charge ... after her (dismembered) body was found,” special prosecutor Jakob BuchJepsen told AFP, referring to Peter Madsen.

The 46-year-old inventor has been held in formal custody since August 12 on suspicion of “negligent manslaughter”, in a case that has shocked and intrigued people

around the world.

Prosecutors have until Sept 5 to request an extension of his custody.

Madsen, who has denied the allegations against him, has insisted Wall died in an accident on board and that he dumped the body in the water at an undefined location in Koge Bay, south of Copenhagen. (AFP)

Macron in Romania:

French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Romania Thursday, the second leg of his trip to Central Europe where he will raise concerns over so-called “posted workers” — cheap labor from Eastern Europe posted temporarily to more prosperous European countries.

Amid tight security, Macron headed for talks with President Klaus Iohannis at the Cotroceni presidential palace and he will later have lunch with Premier Mihai Tudose and other officials.

“Posted workers” from Eastern European nations including Romania and Poland continue to pay into the tax and social security systems of their home countries, allowing employers to hire them for less than in Western countries where welfare costs are higher. The majority work in construction, but many also work as welders, electricians or carers for the elderly. (AP)