Could there be a link between the CNI, Imam Es Satty and the attacks? At least that’s what some Spanish MPs 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 was arrested in 2010 in Ceuta, in possession of 40 kilos of hashish transported from Morocco. He was sentenced to four years in prison for this drug trafficking crime, a sentence he served in Castellón prison. His name had been cited in the Chacal affair, named after a network dismantled in 2006, which recruited jihadists bound for Iraq. At the time, the CNI placed the imam under surveillance, believing that he could become radicalized in prison and pose a threat to national security.
Read: Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty died in the house explosion in Alcanar
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 sign of radicalization was detected by the investigators. However, the person of Es Satty did not inspire confidence, according to the grapho-psychological report to which he was submitted.
-At the end of the process, he was given a telephone number in case he wished to provide information after his release. Once released, the imam had contact with criminals active in drug trafficking. He was radicalized in Ripoll, a town where he became the imam of the Annour mosque. At the time, 610 jihadists were under investigation by the CNI. According to data from the Spanish Interior Ministry, 36 jihadists were arrested in 2014, 75 in 2015, 69 in 2016 and 76 in 2017.
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