Attacks in Spain | A Moroccan imam would have influenced the terrorists

Abdelbaki Es Satty is suspected of having "eaten the brains" of several young people from the community of Ripoll in the Catalan Pyrenees

This 42-year-old Moroccan imam had lived there for two years and would have acted to bring young compatriots to form the terrorist jihadist cell responsible for the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.

From the two-roomed apartment where Abdelbaki Es Satty lived, rented "150 euros" monthly, according to his roommate, we saw the wooded mountain of the Pyrenees and tile roofs of the pretty little Catalan town of Ripoll, 90 km north Of Barcelona. "Tuesday morning he left saying that he was going on vacation in Morocco," reports the fruit seller on the markets Nordeen El Haji, 45, who came to live four months ago in the apartment.

But since Tuesday, it has disappeared. The police spoke of the possibility that he died in an explosion in a house in Alcanar on Wednesday night when the cell responsible for the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils was preparing "one or more bomb attacks". "He spoke little, spent time with his computer in the room, had an old cell phone without internet, few books," said Nordeen El Haji. On a piece of furniture is still the official search order of the premises, dated Friday, a few hours after the two attacks to ramshackle cars that killed 14 people and more than 120 wounded in Catalonia.

A prison history

Anti-terror sources as saying that Abdelbaki Es Satty was released in January 2012 from prison, "where he had formed a special friendship with Rachid Aglif, known as El conejo (the rabbit), sentenced to 18 years" Jihad attacks on suburban trains on 11 March 2004, which left 191 people dead in Madrid. "The imam had a legal problem, but not related to terrorism," said Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero on Sunday. Abdelbaki Es Satty had been incarcerated in connection with "drug trafficking", hashish, between Ceuta and Algesiras (south).

While the press speculates on the decisive influence it could have on the young, sometimes minor, involved in the attacks, his roommate assures in any case that "in four months, he received no young person" at him. "This imam was normal and ordinary when he was in public," said Agence France-Presse Mohamed Akhayad, a 26-year-old Moroccan electro mechanic who was attending the new prayer hall in 2016, where he was preaching. "If he has eaten the brains of these young people, it is secretly in a secret place," he said.

"He was very lonely, frequent more young people than people his age", assures anonymously a 43-year-old Moroccan, saying to have organized the football matches in the room attended by young people involved in the attacks, such Moussa Oukabir, 17 years old, Killed during the attack on Cambrils, Described as "one of the best players, most joyful". In the street where the religious lived, a 64-year-old Catalan, Francesc Gimeno, a decorative painter, says that he "had the reputation of being very Islamist, wanted all Moroccans to think like him, put religion above all". He also accused him of having wanted "to force the Moroccan women of the city to cover themselves". "It's a lie," said Hammou Minhaj, 30, Moroccan secretary of the Muslim community of Ripoll "Annour". "Here in the mosque, he did not say that. Outside, I do not know."

A trip to Belgium and holidays in Morocco

According to him, Abdelbaki Es Satty had arrived in Ripoll in 2015, then "had gone to Belgium as an imam," he said, before returning to Ripoll: "he started in April 2016 as an imam in our new mosque ". However, "at the end of June (2017), he had requested three months of vacation to go on holiday in Morocco".

Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty has stayed in Belgium in 2016, in the commune of Machelen, in the suburbs of Brussels "between January and March 2016", told Agence France-Presse the mayor of the commune bordering Vilvoorde, Hans Bonte, who supervises the municipal police of the two communes. In M'rirt, a small town of 35,000 inhabitants in the center of Morocco, his relatives accuse "Imam de Ripoll" of being the "brain" of the attacks in Spain. "It has been two years since Younès and Houssein (his brother) began to radicalize, under the influence of this Imam 'djebli' (originating from the country Djbala, region of northern Morocco)".