Police were last night investigating Islamic preacher Abdelbaki Es Satty’s possible role in the Barcelona massacre.
They searched his flat for samples of DNA and fingerprints to verify whether he was killed at the bomb factory where the cell prepared a planned attack with butane gas bombs.
Es Satty, 45, began preaching in Ripoll around two years ago but stopped two months ago, sources at the town’s mosque said.
Families of the local Muslim community gather to denounce terrorism and show their grief in Ripoll, north of Barcelona, Spain
Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort
This rented van brought terror to the streets of Europe when it was driven at speed down a busy street in central Barcelona, killing 14 including a three-year-old boy
A man lying on the street in Barcelona after the van ploughed into pedestrians along Las Ramblas
Police sources told Spanish media he followed the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam.
Detectives were said to be investigating whether he radicalised the young men who planned and carried out the atrocity on Thursday afternoon.
Es Satty’s flatmate, named only as Nodir, said the preacher had left home on Tuesday ‘because he was leaving for Morocco’. Nodir has heard nothing from him since.
Police sources told El Mundo newspaper Es Satty’s age and profile suggested he might be the leader of the terror cell. The Mossos d’Esquadra would not comment on that claim.
The Islamic preacher being investigated over the Barcelona massacre had links with a number of terrorists, it emerged last night.
Abdelbaki Es Satty has connections with suspects detained over the 2004 al-Qaeda train bombings which killed 191 people and injured 1,500 in Madrid, counter-terrorism sources told El Pais.
News website OK Diario reported the preacher previously lived in Barcelona with members of a terrorist cell which was smashed by police in 2006.
Another of his former flatmates, Belgacem Bellil, blew himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq in 2003, the website said.
A woman cries as she holds a banner reading in Catalan ‘we also suffer it’ during a demonstration on Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas promenade
A woman holds a banner reading in Spanish ‘Islam means Peace’ during a demonstration on Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas promenade, where a van attack killed 14 people
People pay their respects at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the victims on Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas promenade on the Joan Miro mosaic
A man with his son light candles at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the victims on Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas promenade on the Joan Miro mosaic, embedded in the pavement where the van stopped
Belgacem, an Algerian, detonated 3500lbs of explosives in a truck at a military base, killing 28 people including 19 Italians in al-Nasiriyah in November 2003.
Es Satty also spent two years in prison after being caught smuggling cannabis between north Africa and Spain, El Periodico newspaper reported.
Police are investigating whether Es Satty was responsible for radicalising the members of the cell who carried last week’s atrocities in Barcelona and Cambrils.
Locals in Ripoll said the preacher had kept to himself and had not integrated into the muslim community in the town. Around 500 north Africans live in Ripoll.
Es Satty gave Arabic classes to children but never revealed any extremist beliefs, locals said. But he did tell people in the town that he travelled regularly to Belgium, a hotbed of Islamic extremism.