Crackdown on car and van rentals to halt terror attacks
Drivers face handing over more personal information in the aftermath of Barcelona massacre
BRITISH drivers will face extra checks before renting vehicles to ensure they are not extremists under Government plans being developed after the Barcelona attack.
Ministers are so concerned by how easily terrorists are getting hold of rented vans to drive into pedestrians that they have ordered a crackdown,
The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. Information handed over to rental companies – including names, addresses and financial details – could be cross-checked against criminal watch lists, sources said. Drivers could also be told to give more personal details as officials consider whether more information could help spot likely attackers.
Barcelona was the latest target for an attack using a rental vehicle after similar incidents in Westminster, London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Nice.
Home Office and Department for Transport officials have held talks with the car rental industry about bringing in tougher measures.
News of the crackdown emerged as: A police hunt for Younes Abouyaaqoub, the suspected van driver in the Barcelona attack, intensified as he continued to evade capture.
Security services focussed their investigation on an imam believed to have led the terror cell in Ripoll.
The family of Julian Cadman, the seven-year-old Briton missing since the attack, arrived in Spain.
A British paramedic was praised as a hero for taking on a knife attacker in a separate terror incident in Finland.
Last week the Barcelona attackers used two rental vans – one to run over pedestrians and another as a suspected getaway vehicle – to kill 13 people and leave almost 130 wounded. It is believed they had previously attempted to rent a truck for a bomb attack but were thwarted because they lacked the correct paperwork.
Ministers have tasked officials with looking into whether more can be done to spot would-be attackers before they are handed the keys to rental vehicles. Currently three checks are carried out by rental companies to prove the driver’s identification, that they have enough money to pay and are correctly insured and licensed.
However, there is a hope that the information submitted for bookings could be used more efficiently to flag people of concern. Talks between offi- cials and the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) have been held recently, though no final decision has been made on any changes.
Toby Poston, director of external relations at BVRLA, told The Sunday Tel
egraph: “The industry is looking at ways to share data with the authorities in as real time as possible so it can be cross-referenced with counter-terrorism watch lists.”
A Government spokesman said it was looking at “what more can be done to prevent the malicious use of hire vehicles.”
‘To me, he has always been a good boy, no trouble. I [do] not understand why he would do this. I am angry’
CATALAN investigators yesterday raided the house of an imam in the town of Ripoll they believe may have overseen the cell, which killed 14 people in twin terrorist attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils.
Police are trying to piece together how a cell composed of multiple sets of brothers from the same sleepy Pyrenees town came to carry out the attacks, amid reports they planned to blow up the Sagrada Familia.
The home of imam Abdelbaki Es Satty was raided overnight on Friday, with officers reportedly seeking – among other evidence – DNA samples that might link him to a building in the town of Alcanar believed to be where the attack was prepared.
And last night, it was reported that the imam once shared a flat with Bel- gacem Bellil, an Algerian terrorist who blew himself up in a murderous suicide attack in Iraq in 2003.
El Pais, a leading Spanish daily, said they were investigating whether the imam, who apparently left Ripoll around a month ago, might be one of two dead bodies discovered in the Alcanar house. Sources involved in the investigation told El Confidencial they believed he was a “spiritual or ideological leader” to the cell members, radicalising them and helping them to plan the attacks.
Police did not officially confirm or deny the reports.
A spokesman for the Catalan force told The Sunday Telegraph they were working on the “principal hypothesis” that the cell was comprised of 12 members, 11 of whom have been identified and hail almost exclusively from Ripoll.
The head of the Ripoll mosque at which Abdelbaki Es Satty preached told reporters that he had arrived just over a year ago and left at the end of June, when he asked for three months’ holiday to visit Morocco and was denied. The imam, said to be a father aged about 45, had never said or done anything to prompt concern, said Ali Yassine, the mosque chief. “We never heard anything about him or received any (complaint) until this happened, and we don’t know how this happened, this has fallen on us like a stone,” he said. But, he added, no one could know what was happening “inside a person’s head”.
The suspected cell members rarely came to the mosque, but had seemed like “normal boys”, Mr Yassine explained, adding that he had only ever seen Younes Aouyaaquoub, the suspected driver, “three or four times”.
The mosque president emphatically condemned the attacks, saying terrorism was the act of “crazy people”.
Five members of the cell died at the hands of police in the attack on Cambrils late on Thursday night, which killed one woman and injured several others. Moussa Oukabir, 17, Mohammed Hychami, 23 and Said Aallaa, 19, all believed to be of Moroccan origin, have been officially identified as among the attackers killed. The other two have been named by Spanish press as Omar Hychami, Mohammed’s brother, and Houssaine Aouyaaquoub, who is presumed to be a family member of Younes Aouyaaquoub, the suspected driver of the Ramblas van who is still on the run.
Another four have been detained, including Driss Oukabir, 23, Moussa’s brother, whose identification was found in the van that attacked Ramblas but who claims it was stolen by his sib- ling. Almost all of the men lived in proximity in Ripoll – Oukabir and MohammedHychami in the same building – while Aallaa lived in the nearby town of Ribes de Freser. What remains unclear is exactly what led the cell to Alcanar, a town almost 200 miles to the south, where police believe they were preparing an attack initially intended to involve explosives. Alcanar and Cambrils both sit in a coastal area south of Barcelona that has gained a reputation as a Salafist hotbed after a number of terror arrests. It was in Salou, adjacent to Cambrils, that one of the 9/11 attackers, Mohammed Atta, held a meeting with a key al-Qaeda figure.
But its connection to Ripoll is unknown. Police have found two bodies in the rubble of the Alcanar house after a blast early on Thursday, which was initially suspected to be caused by a gas leak in a drugs lab. One of the injured men, a Spanish national from the enclave of Melilla in Morocco, was later arrested as a suspected cell member.
Investigators at the site, where controlled explosions were carried out on Friday and yesterday, later discovered a stockpile of explosive material including 100 gas canisters. Local media reported that a crude and unstable homemade explosive, acetone peroxide, was being produced in the house.
Neighbours speculated that recent heatwave might have triggered the blast, saving Barcelona from an even more devastating attack. Catalan police believed the group had been preparing to use the explosives, either against one target or in multiple attacks.
They could not confirm or deny reports in two Spanish newspapers that the cell’s “Plan A” was to blow up the Sagrada Familia, the iconic Barcelona cathedral designed by Antonio Gaudí.
Residents of Ripoll – a town of just 11,000, around a tenth of whom are of North African origin – said that Moussa Oukabir and the imam disappeared around the same time.
At the home of Younes Aouyaaquoub, an elderly neighbour said that she would not have believed the teenager capable of such violence. “To me, he has always been a good boy, no trouble. I [do] not understand why he would do this. I am angry,” she said.
Others in the neighbourhood also expressed disbelief that so many young men from the town could have been drawn into terrorism. Speaking to The
Sunday Telegraph, a shop assistant at a tobacconist close to where Moussa Oubakir lived said that no one in the town had heard of anyone leaving to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The woman, who would only give her first name, Ximena, added: “We don’t get this here. We are a small town and we would know about it.”
Spanish authorities said they would maintain the state of alert at level four, rather than raising it to the maximum of five, saying they did not believe a further attack was imminent.
Sites with high numbers of tourists, such as the Sagrada Familia, which will today hold a special mass for peace, will also be closely guarded.