Madrid justice has ruled.
The trio accused of having belonged to a jihadist cell which carried out a double attack that killed 16 people in Catalonia (north-eastern Spain) in 2017, or of having been an accomplice, were sentenced, Thursday 27 May, to sentences ranging from 8 to 53 years in prison.
Mohamed Houli Chemlal and Driss Oukabir, tried for belonging to this cell, were sentenced to 53 and a half years and 46 years respectively, while the prosecution had requested 41 and 36 years against them.
In its statement, the Madrid court of the National Hearing, responsible in particular for cases of terrorism, however indicated that their effective sentence "would not exceed 20 years".
Fourteen people killed
The court, on the other hand, followed the prosecution with regard to Saïd Ben Iazza, sentenced to 8 years in prison for having lent a vehicle and papers to the attackers.
The first attack took place on August 17 on the famous avenue des Ramblas in Barcelona, where a ram van had charged passers-by, killing 14 people, mostly foreign tourists.
In his flight, the driver had murdered another person to steal his car before fleeing.
A few hours after the Ramblas massacre, five other members of the cell carried out the second attack on the seafront of the small seaside resort of Cambrils, 100 km further south, knocking down several people there with a vehicle before fatally stabbing a woman.
The six perpetrators of these two attacks, which had been claimed by the Islamic State organization, all Moroccans, were shot by the police.
The National Hearing heard more than 200 witnesses from November 2020 to February 2021.
In the sights of radical Islam
During the investigation, Mohamed Houli Chemlal, the main accused, explained to the police that the cell's initial plan was to carry out attacks against famous sites, notably mentioning the basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
The plans for the cell had been shattered by the accidental explosion of their hideout in Alcanar, 200 kilometers south of Barcelona, where the jihadists were making explosives.
The explosion, which had injured Chemlal, had precipitated the passage to the act of the group, indoctrinated, according to the accusation, by a Moroccan imam of 44 years, Abdelbaki Es Satty.
One of the most poignant testimonies of the trial was that of Javier Martínez, whose 3-year-old son died on the Ramblas.
"All the feelings that one has to continue living, to fight, are shattered on the ground" of the Ramblas, he had said in court.
Spain was hit on March 11, 2004 by the bloodiest jihadist attack in Europe, when devices exploded on board four suburban trains in Madrid's Atocha station, killing 191 people and injuring around 2,000 .
It has not suffered a new attack since the 2017 attacks in Catalonia, but many experts believe it remains in the sights of radical Islam.
With AFP
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