A suspected member of the terror cell that unleashed carnage in Spain last week admitted to a judge on Tuesday that the jihadists had planned to hit monuments in an even bigger attack.
Mohamed Houli Chemlal, 21, and three others were charged with terrorist offences over the rampages in Barcelona and a seaside resort that claimed 15 lives and wounded more than 100 people.
They are the only survivors of a 12-man cell whose members rammed a van into pedestrians on a tourist-packed boulevard in Barcelona on Thursday and hours later carried out a similar attack in the seaside resort of Cambrils further south.
The four were charged with “belonging to a terrorist organisation, terror-related murder and possession of explosives,” said a judicial source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The cell was planning “an attack on an even greater scale, targeting monuments,” according to the source.
Chemlal, a 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.
Chemlal also said during interrogation that the imam wanted to blow himself up, according to the source.
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 alter their plans.
AFP
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