Spanish Intelligence Agency Accused of Ties to Imam Behind 2017 Barcelona Attack

Is there a link between the CNI, Imam Es Satty and the attacks? This is at least what some Spanish deputies think, based on declassified documents from the Center. Es Satty died while handling explosives in the Alcanar chalet where the attacks were being prepared. But the deputies concerned are convinced that the imam of Ripoll is still alive and that he participated, with the complicity of the CNI, in the attacks in Catalonia.

Es Satty had been arrested in 2010 in Ceuta, in possession of 40 kilos of hashish transported from Morocco. He had been sentenced to four years in prison for this drug trafficking crime, a sentence he served in the Castellón prison. His name had been mentioned in the Chacal case, named after a network dismantled in 2006, which recruited jihadists for Iraq. At the time, the CNI placed the imam under surveillance, considering that he could become radicalized in prison and pose a threat to national security.

The CNI also studied the possibility of recruiting Es Satty as a source. In this perspective, the imam of Ripoll, who continued to serve his sentence, had undergone three interviews in 2014. During the evaluation of these three interviews, no signs of radicalization were detected by the investigators. However, the person of Es Satty did not inspire confidence, according to the grapho-psychological report to which he was subjected.

At the end of the process, a telephone number was communicated to him in case he wished to provide information after his release. Once released, the imam had contacts with criminals active in drug trafficking. He would have become radicalized in Ripoll, the city where he became the imam of the Annour mosque. At the time, 610 jihadists were the subject of an investigation by the CNI. According to data from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, 36 jihadists were arrested in 2014, 75 in 2015, 69 in 2016 and 76 in 2017.