agency france-press
Madrid, August 22: An alleged member of the terror cell that unleashed carnage in Spain last week admitted to a judge Tuesday that he and other suspects had planned a bigger attack, a judicial source said.
Mohamed Houli Chemlal, 21, was the first of four surviving suspects to be questioned in Madrid’s National Court, which deals with terror-related cases, over the attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort that claimed 15 lives and wounded more than 100 people.
The Spaniard was injured in an accidental explosion at a makeshift bomb factory on Wednesday evening that killed an imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, thought to have radicalised him and other young suspects. Police had previously revealed that the suspected jihadists had been preparing bombs for “one or more attacks in Barcelona”. Josep Lluis Trapero, head of police in Catalonia, said 120 gas canisters and traces of TATP components — a homemade explosive that is a hallmark of the Islamic State group that claimed the attacks — had been found at their bomb factory. The accidental explosion in the house in Alcanar, south of Barcelona, may have forced the suspects to modify their plans.
The questioning of the four suspects caps five days of angst following the vehicle ramming attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils. Spanish police shot dead Younes Abouyaaqoub, the suspected Barcelona van driver, Monday in a dramatic end to the manhunt for the Moroccan national, who shouted “God is greatest” when he was killed. He was the last fugitive member of a 12-man cell suspected of plotting the attacks. Besides the four men detained, the rest were killed, either by police or in the explosion in Alcanar.