Three men go on trial over attacks in Barcelona that killed 16

Three men are on trial in Spain, accused of helping perpetrators of a double ISIS attack that killed 16 people.

Terrorists drove vehicles into pedestrians, mainly foreign tourists, in the 2017 attacks, in which 140 people were also injured.

The atrocities took place on August 17 and 18 in Barcelona and Cambrils, a resort town 100 kilometres away.

Yesterday Driss Oukabir, Mohamed Houli Chemlal and Said Ben Iazza went on trial, charged with being part of the terrorist cell that helped to plot and prepare the attacks.

The six people who carried out the attacks were later shot and killed by police.

In the first attack, one of the terrorists ploughed a van into a section of Barcelona’s crowded Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 14 people, including two children aged three and seven, and injuring many others.

The driver then went on the run, killing another person, but was shot dead by police several days later.

Five of the driver’s accomplices staged a second attack in Cambrils, ramming pedestrians and stabbing a woman – who died of her injuries.

The attackers were carrying knives and wearing fake suicide vests. Yesterday, the court was shown a video of members of the cell, including one of the accused – Mr Chemlal – preparing explosives while they laughed and joked and threatened to carry out terrorist attacks.

Mr Chemlal told authorities after his arrest that he had been told what to say during the video and that he did not agree with what they did.

He declined to take prosecutors’ questions yesterday but told the court he regretted the attacks.

Two members of the cell, including an imam believed to have been the ring leader, died in an explosion at a country house where they were preparing explosives hours before the vehicle attacks. Mr Chemlal was also injured in the blast.

The 23- year- old told investigators the group had been planning attacks “on an even greater scale”, with Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia basilica, the city’s Camp Nou football stadium and the Eiffel Tower in Paris among the possible targets.

But the accidental explosion in Alcanar, a coastal town between Barcelona and Valencia, pushed them to carry out the two attacks sooner.

The blast killed Abdelbaki Es Satty, 44, the cleric who was allegedly responsible for radicalising the trio.

Taking the stand, an unidentified investigator said evidence was found that August 20 would be the date they “very likely planned to carry out a terrorist attack” with vans, explosive vests and grenades. The likely target would be Barcelona’s football ground Camp Nou during a match with a focus on the exits, he said. However, on August 15, the accidental explosion changed their plans. The investigator told the court the imam killed was their