The infinite skein of the Vidal-Quadras shooting

More suspects, new connections abroad and numerous questions still in the investigation of the attempted murder in Madrid, on November 9, of the former president of the PP in Catalonia and co-founder of Vox Alejo Vidal-Quadras.

To the arrest on Tuesday in Colombia of the Venezuelan citizen Greg Oliver Higuera Marcano for his alleged involvement in the preparations for the attack, is now added the identification of an alleged new member of the plot, the Moroccan Sami Bekal Bounouare, alias

Pacho

, currently missing unknown, as

El Confidencial has advanced

and EL PAÍS has confirmed in sources close to the investigations.

The investigation already points to at least six people - four of them detained - but it still does not answer the main question: who and why ordered the killing of the Spanish politician.

The so-called Iranian clue – which the victim herself opened by accusing the Tehran regime of “plotting and executing” the attack – is not, however, the only hypothesis that the police are using to unravel a strange tangle that spans three continents and in which There is already a former model, an unemployed bricklayer, a Muslim convert who worked advising victims of financial fraud, a hitman wanted for murder in France, a criminal with a history on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and, now, the last one identified.

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One of those involved in the attack against Vidal-Quadras arrested in Colombia

Police sources have not yet attributed a specific role to Bekal Bounouare in the plot to commit the attack that caused serious injuries to the politician, although they do rule out that he was the ultimate instigator of the attack or the organizer.

The investigations have revealed that this Moroccan, who supposedly left Spain the day before the assassination attempt towards his country, exchanged messages through an instant messaging application before and after the attack with another of those involved, the Spaniard Naraya Gómez Mala , a young convert to Islam who was arrested on November 21 in Lanjarón (Granada).

Gómez Mala is considered by the police to be one of the key players in the alleged plot.

Raised in a

hippy

commune and working since September 2021 in a small firm specialized in “assistance to those injured in fraud and bad practices in the financial sector” whose main clients are British retirees residing in Spain, Gómez Mala was in key places for the preparation of the attack in the days prior to it and even on the same day it was committed.

The video surveillance cameras in the commercial premises near Vidal-Quadras' home, where he was shot, recorded him on several occasions.

In addition, the radars of the General Directorate of Traffic detected a rented vehicle that was located near his home, greatly exceeding the maximum speed limits on a journey between Madrid and Andalusia on the day of the attack.

The same day that the National Police arrested Gómez Mala, they arrested two other people.

One was her romantic partner, Sasha B., a young woman of British nationality who worked in the same company as him and whose professional resume highlighted that she had been a model.

The police are still not clear about the degree of this woman's involvement and whether she knew about the activities of her partner.

After testifying before the judge of the National Court Francisco de Jorge, Sasha B. was provisionally released.

The second person was Adrián RB, an unemployed man from Mijas (Málaga) dedicated to doing small works, whom the police arrested for his relationship with the large-displacement motorcycle used to flee the scene of the attack by the hitman who perpetrated it.

This twenty-year-old admitted that he was in charge of purchasing and putting that motorcycle in his name even though he did not have a license to drive this type of vehicle.

In exchange, the plot gave him the amount and a bonus of 500 euros for carrying out the management.

This motorcycle was found shortly after the assassination attempt, burned to death in an open field in Fuenlabrada, a town southwest of Madrid.

The discovery of the VIN (vehicle identification number) among the remains allowed investigators to reach the young man from Malaga.

Adrián RB - who was also provisionally released after testifying at the National Court - implicated in his testimony Greg Oliver Higuera, alias

Maquia

, the Venezuelan citizen detained on the border of his country with Colombia last Tuesday.

Higuera, who had previously been imprisoned both in his country and in Italy for different crimes, allegedly had a double role in the attack against the former leader of the PP and Vox.

On the one hand, he was the person who convinced the unemployed man from Malaga to purchase the motorcycle and gave him the money.

On the other hand, it is suspected that he was also the one who proposed the sixth person identified in the plot, the Frenchman of Tunisian origin Mehrez Ayari, 37, to commit the attack.

Higuera and the latter had met in a prison in Italy, according to the investigation.

Ayari is, along with the Moroccan Bekal Bounouare, one of the alleged members of the plot identified who has not yet been arrested.

Wanted by the Paris authorities for his alleged connection with a murder in France, the alleged hitman carried out the attack with his head covered with a motorcycle helmet so as not to be identified.

However, the images from the security cameras in the area have revealed his face, since he did not take that same precaution the previous days, when he supposedly went to reconnoitre the area near the politician's home.

The investigation revealed that, after shooting, Ayari fled the scene on the motorcycle and tried to destroy it in an open field in Fuenlabrada.

Then, he went to a hotel in the same municipality located a kilometer and a half away, where he had spent the night the previous night, according to investigators.

The Police believe that the Franco-Tunisian moved to Spain only to commit the crime and that he very possibly left shortly after.

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