Spain: Has the head of an Islamist terrorist cell really blown up?
Stranger and stranger circumstances came to light, statements were hidden, the imam was a secret service agent, the surviving terrorists were not charged with murder
- Ralf Streck
It has long been no secret that the head of the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in the summer of three years ago was an informant for the Spanish secret service .
A year ago, the Público newspaper revealed that the secret service and other Spanish security forces were in contact with Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty until the attacks in August 2017, which Telepolis had reported extensively on ( Spanish secret service controlled terrorist cell .
Now Público has added and published that a key statement about Es Satty's work for the Spanish secret service was hidden in the mountain of investigation files with a volume of 100,000 pages and passed over by the public prosecutor's office and the Guardia Civil. The newspaper does not consider this to be a coincidence, after all, it was the main witness whose questioning had been expressly requested by Spain from the Belgian authorities.
Público rather assumes that the statement should remain hidden. It is therefore not mentioned in a summary of the investigations in the context of a request for legal assistance and it does not appear in the table of contents of a CD on which it is stored. Neither the judge nor the lawyers, therefore, knew of the existence of the statement. And no translation of the statement was sent to the judge responsible.
It is the five-page testimony of Soliman Akaychouh, the head of a mosque in Diegem near Brussels, where Es Satty wanted to preach. Akaychouh was questioned just three days after the attacks and stated in a statement published by Público that Es Satty said he was in telephone contact with the Spanish secret service. "He told me that he was speaking to the Spanish secret service, which among other things wanted to know where he was," said the head of the mosque.
The head of the mosque was suspicious of the imam because of his radicalism and extremism. That's why he got in touch with the Belgian police. The then started a request to the Catalan police. However, this yielded nothing, as the Mossos d'Esquadra, as is well known, had not been informed by their Spanish colleagues about the activities of the well-known radical Islamist and former drug dealer. As Telepolis reported, the Mossos were also left with access to important data and resources from the Center for Combating Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO).
Behind this was an unbelievable process in which the Spanish national police warned radical Islamists in 2015 about the investigation by the Catalan police. The troops were evacuated with the "Operación Caronte" and wanted to carry out attacks on Jewish institutions in Barcelona and the parliament. The Islamists were also in contact with a neo-Nazi, friend of the head of the troop, to get weapons and explosives. And surprisingly, he was not accused of "supporting terrorism".
The big parties are preventing any clarification of the Imam's involvement with the security forces
These events are part of a whole series of peculiarities surrounding Islamist activities in Catalonia and Es Satty. He was known to the Spanish security forces as a radical Islamist since 2003. He was in contact with radical Islamists and was friends with one of those who caused the 2004 massacre in Madrid, which left 191 dead. Strangely, Es Satty was also released early from jail where he was on drug trafficking. And his deportation to Morocco, which had been expressly stipulated in the judgment after the sentence had been served, was not implemented either, as he did not pose a "danger".
One could list many more curiosities. There is the fact that all the major parties in the Spanish parliament are refusing to investigate the imam's involvement with the security forces. Then there is the fact that the surviving members of the terrorist cell will not be charged with murder, despite the fact that they killed 17 people - including a German woman - and planned huge attacks. They were prevented because part of the troops was blown up while building the bomb the night before.
"We doubt that the Imám of Ripoll is dead"
The newest and most interesting curiosity, however, is that serious questions now arise as to whether the secret service spy Es Satty actually blew up while building the bomb in Alcanar, which has always been assumed so far. The lawyer Jaume Cuevillas said on Catalan television: "We doubt that the Imám of Ripoll is dead." Cuevillas represents the family of the young Xavier Martínez, who was also murdered during the terrorist drive with the van on the Ramblas.
He didn't find any evidence in the investigation files, such as DNA traces, that could prove that Es Satty was actually in the house at the time of the explosion. According to the investigators, four to five terrorists are said to have been there. However, only the remains of two people were found in the rubble, of whom only one could be identified. Witnesses also testified that the Imam's car drove away shortly after the explosion, which was later found in a neighboring village.
Es Satty's cell phone was also not found in the rubble. The lawyer reports from the investigation files that the phone was still used four days after the explosion. The e-mail address through which the terrorist was in contact with the secret service, as Público had discovered, was also used after the explosion. For Cuevillas it is also noticeable that no one claimed the Imam's body, but that the Imam's niece bought two plane tickets the night after the explosion and hours before the attack in Barcelona. Because of all of this, the attorney expressed "reasonable doubts" that Es Satty is dead.
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