The fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils has been marked by political anger and the resurgence of conspiracy theories linking the State to the attacks.
After criticism of the president of Junts per Catalunya, Laura Borràs, at the tribute to the victims held in Barcelona for her political role, greeting those who broke the minute of silence, the party has resorted to conspiracy theories.
"Five days before the attacks, the CNI was listening to the murderers' mobile," the deputy in the Congress of Junts Miriam Nogueras insisted on Friday to questions on TVE about whether she supported Borràs's actions.
"The greatest act of respect for the victims is to clarify the truth of what happened," she insisted.
The thesis of the tapped phones was already promoted on the same day of the anniversary by the former Minister of the Interior Joaquim Forn, in office during the attacks and later convicted by the
procés sentence.
At half past eleven at night, and after a day of criticism on social networks against Borràs —suspended as president of the Parliament— Forn tweeted the 2019 news from the newspaper
Público
that affirms that the “CNI listened to the cell phones of the murderers of Las Ramblas five days before the massacre”.
The tweet was retweeted by the official account of Junts per Catalunya and deputies such as Albert Batet.
The truth about the Ripoll magnet (2) |
EXCLUSIVE: The CNI listened to the cell phones of the Las Ramblas killers five days before the massacre |
Public https://t.co/DO1uDLN9x0
– Joaquim Forn (@quimforn) August 17, 2022
Five years after the attacks, there is no data to verify this information.
It is a report without date, stamp or signature that
Público
attributes to the CNI and that it published in fragments.
The conversations cited in the document were recovered from the mobile phone of one of the terrorists, Mohamed Hichamy, killed in Cambrils, who used the Call recorder application to record his calls.
He also kept numerous WhatsApp chats.
Likewise, the news insists that all the details of the trip to Paris of two of the terrorists, a few days before the attacks, could only be obtained if they were followed live.
In a joint team with the French police, through license plates, credit cards and field investigations, it was possible to reconstruct what they did.
baseless theories
Knowing a supposed hidden truth of the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils is the usual demand of independence parties, which do not specify the details that they do not know.
It is a generic request, "we want to know the truth", in which logical doubts are sheltered without clearing up a retrospective investigation and unfounded theories, such as the one defended by the lawyer of one of the victims and Junts deputy, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, who questions that the imam of Ripoll, Abdelbaki Es Satty, died in the explosion in Alcanar (Tarragona).
The sentence of the National High Court maintains that there is no doubt that he died there, after analyzing the remains with DNA of relatives of Es Satty.
Ripoll's imam spent 20 years in Spain before dying in the Alcanar explosion.
A character with different faces, who was also an imam at the Vilanova i la Geltrú mosque, the scene of an anti-terrorist operation in 2006 from which Es Satty emerged unscathed, as journalists Braulio García Jaén and Matías Escudero Arce explain in
El Confidente and the terrorist
(Ariel).
But he was later jailed for drug trafficking.
Es Satty received four visits from the CNI and the Civil Guard in the Castellón prison, according to Penitentiary Institutions.
The director of the Spanish intelligence services admitted, in the official secrets commission, contacts with the imam and the mistake of not having followed up on him once he was released from prison.
The imam's relationship with the Spanish secret and police services is one of the elements that generates the most suspicion.
The public explanation of these contacts has not been delved into, whether a subsequent relationship with him was established —Es Satty bragged about his dealings with the Spanish secret services—, or the possible mistakes made.
Both the PP and the PSOE have vetoed, as ERC and Junts repeatedly reproach, an investigation commission in Congress.
In the one carried out in the Catalan Parliament, it was concluded that Es Satty was an "informer of the CNI" and the National Police.
Another nuclear element that has not been clarified with the investigation is the relationship of the terrorist cell with the outside world.
Es Satty lived in Belgium, worked at the Youssef de Digem mosque, very close to Brussels, and was expelled from the cult center after not certifying that he had no criminal record.
But he returned to Belgium only three weeks after the attack at Zaventem airport (Brussels), in which 30 people died in 2016. The judicial investigation has not been able to clarify, despite numerous suspicions, if he had direct ties with the State. Islamic.
The group of young people from Ripoll captured by Es Satty and who committed the attacks were already consuming propaganda from the Islamic State and were in a process of self-radicalization when the imam arrived in the Catalan municipality, as journalist Anna Teixidor,
Los Silences , explains in her investigation.
of 17-A
(Dieresis).
Nor has it been possible to know if the imam already had any previous information about them when he settled in the municipality, where he worked as an imam.
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