The lost boy of Barcelona

The family of a British seven-year-old boy caught up in the horror of the Barcelona carnage faced an agonising wait last night to learn if he had survived.

Julian Cadman’s father, Andrew, arrived in Spain last night after flying overnight from his home in Australia to seek information from police and consular officials after the boy was officially described as ‘missing’ by the Foreign Office.

The boy’s mother Jumarie – known as Jom – was still in hospital last night with serious injuries.

Mr Cadman’s wife and son were in Spain for a family wedding when they were caught up in the van attack on Las Ramblas. A poignant photograph of the youngster, from Kent, proudly wearing an England football shirt, was taken just days before in the UK. 

His father, a 42-year-old cabinet maker, only found out about the attack on the radio.

Last night, as Mr Cadman visited the city morgue, where the bodies of victims of the atrocity are being held, Julian’s family were bracing themselves for the worst.

Social media appeals for information on the youngster were taken down yesterday.

As the family’s ordeal continued, it emerged:

• Jihadis had planned to use a volatile explosive known as the ‘Mother of Satan’ to murder hundreds of people in a ‘spectacular’ terror attack, even more devastating than Thursday’s atrocity in which 13 people were killed and more than 130 injured;
• A huge international manhunt codenamed Operation Cage continued for the driver of the van, who is believed to be the final member of the terror cell;
• Police were last night investigating an Islamic preacher over his possible involvement in the Barcelona massacre;
• The youngest victim of the Las Ramblas attack was named yesterday as Javier Martinez, three, who died alongside his great-uncle Francisco Lopez Rodriguez;
• Pressure mounted on Channel 4 to postpone a controversial drama about Islamic State.

The alleged van driver, Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, and originally from Mrirt in Morocco, is thought to be the only member of the IS cell still on the run.

In a day of fast-moving developments, the Cadmans’ extended family endured the agony of conflicting media reports on whether Julian was found or missing, alive or dead.

‘We have had the television on constantly since it happened,’ said Norma Canaveral, who affectionately calls the boy ‘my grandson’ although she is his great-aunt.

‘We’ve been on Facebook and looking on the internet for anything that might give us hope that Julian is all right,’ said the 66-year-old hospital worker last night from her terrace home in Plaistow, East London.

One image from the attack has stayed with her, she said.

MASSIVE MANHUNT FOR MURDEROUS WHITE 

Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22

A massive manhunt was under way across Europe last night for the man suspected of driving the white van that killed 13 and injured more than 130 people in the Barcelona attack.

Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, is thought to be the only member still on the run of a 12-strong Islamic State cell believed to be behind the attacks at Las Ramblas and Cambrils. Officers have released a mugshot of him.

Josep Lluis Trapero, chief of the Mossos d’Esquadra police force in Barcelona, said they did not believe the driver of the van had linked up with the rest of the cell in Cambrils after the massacre. La Vanguardia newspaper reported that he may have slipped into the Liceu station, then taken the Metro to Maria Cristina.

Detectives are investigating whether Abouyaaqoub carjacked driver Pau Perez, fatally stabbed him, and then stole his Ford Focus. The car was driven through a police checkpoint at Sant Just Desvern on Thursday evening, injuring a sergeant. Officers opened fire on the vehicle, and Perez’s body was found inside. Abouyaaqoub is believed to have fled on foot.

Moroccan Abouyaaqoub lives in the town of Ripoll, 65 miles north of Barcelona where Moussa Oukabir, who was shot by police in Cambrils, also lived. 

It shows a young boy, limbs horribly askew and apparently lifeless, on Las Ramblas in the aftermath of the outrage.

‘It was so shocking to see that picture – it looks like Julian,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping and praying that it’s not, but it looks very like him.

‘And lying near to him is a woman who definitely looks like Jumarie. Looking at this picture, I definitely fear the worst.’

Mrs Canaveral’s son Warlito, 30, and daughter Christabel, 28, have been frantically calling relatives who had travelled to Barcelona for the family wedding.

‘They haven’t been able to get in touch with anyone – it seems as though everyone’s mobile is switched off after the attack,’ said Mrs Canaveral.

Social media appeals for information on the youngster were taken down yesterday

The aftermath of the Las Ramblas attack is seen in an aerial view for the first time in this exclusive picture, taken by Briton John Ward from his balcony, just minutes after the terror atrocity. The picture shows: (1) An injured pedestrian being attended to. (2) A body amid the scattered papers of a news-stand. (3) A casualty wrapped in an emergency foil blanket. (4) Medics tending a badly injured person next to the clearly damaged terrorists’ van. (5) Another covered body; (6) A victim caught up in the horror

Mourners pay respects at a memorial with flowers, messages and candles to the victims on Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas promenade

Mourners light candles at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the victims

Tributes: Police immediately cordoned off the city’s broad avenue and ordered stores and nearby Metro and train stations to close after the attack

‘All we can do is leave messages on social media and call anyone we can think of who might know something, but so far we’ve heard nothing. It’s so frustrating.’

Another close relative of the Cadmans in England, who asked not to be named, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We are all desperately worried.’

The family member said Jom, who had travelled with Julian to Barcelona for her niece’s wedding, was undergoing further operations in hospital. ‘Jom has broken legs, broken arms, a broken hand and facial injuries,’ she said. Last night police were searching the flat of an Islamic preacher, Abdelbaki Es Satty, for samples of DNA and fingerprints to verify whether he was killed at the bomb factory where the cell had been preparing an attack with butane gas bombs.

Es Satty, 45, began preaching in the town of Ripoll – where several members of the gang lived – around two years ago but stopped two months ago, sources at the town’s mosque said.

Hoping against hope… British boy’s father lands in Spain 

The father of schoolboy Julian Cadman arrived in Barcelona last night after flying halfway across the world to join the desperate hunt for the seven-year-old caught up in the atrocity.

Andrew Cadman made the 22-hour trip from Australia before travelling to the hospital where his wife, Jom

Cadman, is being treated after being struck by the van in the attack.

Mrs Cadman, who travelled to Barcelona with her son to attend her niece’s wedding, remains in a serious condition but is doing ‘really well’, according to doctors. 

Before leaving his home in Sydney on Friday, Mr Cadman said he had spoken to his son and wife an hour before the attack. 

Andrew Cadman

One – possibly two – members of the jihadi cell were killed when their bomb factory at a house in Alcanar, 125 miles south of Barcelona, blew up on Wednesday night.

Five more terrorists were shot dead in Cambrils, a seaside town 70 miles south-west of Barcelona, in the early hours of Friday as they launched a second attack with axes and knives.

It is thought Moussa Oukabir, 17, originally suspected of being the van driver after using his older brother’s identify papers to rent it, was among those shot dead in Cambrils.

Four more suspects, including Oukabir’s older brother Driss, 28, are being questioned by detectives and are expected to appear before an investigating magistrate this week. Said Oukabir, the father of the Oukabir brothers, said he was in shock that his sons were suspected of involvement.

They had shown no sign of radicalisation, he said at his home in Melouiya, a village high in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. ‘They lived like the young people of their age, dressed like them,’ he added. 

At the same time, countless individual acts of heroism continued to emerge. British tourist Harry Athwal risked his own safety by staying with a badly injured boy because the child reminded him of his own son.

In one of the most poignant images of the outrage, Mr Athwal was pictured kneeling next to the boy in Las Ramblas, despite being warned by police to move away in case there was a second attack.

Mr Athwal, 44, said he could not leave the bleeding and apparently lifeless body, even though he did not know the boy, because he was so like his own eight-year-old son, Khye.

In a moving text message sent to his wife Harjinder, Mr Athwal said: ‘When I look at him I cannot stop crying.’ In another message he added: ‘That was somebody’s child… it was our kid,’ followed immediately by: ‘He was my kid.’

The project manager, from Great Barr, Birmingham, said he had been at a restaurant overlooking the busy street with his sister and two of her friends when they saw the van mowing down pedestrians.

He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It was the noise that first caught our attention, the thuds, and we saw this van coming at such speed throwing people in the air like they were just clothes.

‘Within four or five seconds I knew what was happening and I said to the rest of my group, ‘Stay here’ and ran down to the road.

‘The first thing I saw was this boy lying in the middle of Las Ramblas. I went over to him and held him. His leg was bent and there were big chunks of blood on his head. He was not breathing. I tried to find a pulse and I kept my hand on his back for about ten minutes.

‘There are no words of comfort I could give to his family. I can’t get his face out of my mind. He was so like my own son.’

An off-duty nurse told how he cried while treating victims among ‘a desert of dead people’ on Las Ramblas. Albert Tort Siso, 41, was on his way home from the beach when he came across a scene of ‘total disaster’ on the city’s famous boulevard. Mr Siso, who was still in his flip-flops, headed towards the disaster area, only to be stopped by a police patrol.

He said: ‘The police would not let me pass but I told them, ‘I’m a nurse, I want to help’, and I passed. What I saw was a total disaster. I counted at least six dead.’

Mr Siso, who is chairman of the Catalonia Nursing Council, spent 25 minutes trying to revive a young Italian man, who died in his arms.

Last night he insisted: ‘I’m no hero – I’m just a nurse.’