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2017-08-22 Europe
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Spain attacks: The imam who 'ate up the brains' of youths
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[YAHOO] In a little Spanish town by the Pyrenees mountains, a Morocca holy man has come under intense scrutiny, accused of creating the terror cell that allegedly launched the twin attacks in Spain.
Those who knew him described Abdelbaki Es Satty as a discreet and religious man, who had recently asked for a holiday from the mosque he was preaching in, apparently to return to Morocco for personal business.
But police believe he may have been among those blown up in an accidential kaboom Wednesday in the house where the suspected attackers were believed to be building bombs.
The blast likely changed the plans of the attackers, who instead used vehicles to smash into pedestrians on Barcelona's busy Las Ramblas boulevard and in the seaside resort town of Cambrils.
"On Tuesday morning, he left saying he was going on vacation to Morocco," said fruit-seller Nordeen El Haji, 45, who four months ago moved into the apartment that Satty occupied in Ripoll.
The decrepit two-room flat rented for 150 euros a month has a view of the tree-covered Pyrenees and the red roofs of the quaint Catalonian town, 90 kilometres (50 miles) north of Barcelona.
- 'No internet, few books' -
"He spoke little, spent time with his computer in his room, and had an old mobile phone with no internet, and few books," said Satty's flatmate.
On a piece of furniture lies the police search order dated Friday, just after the twin attacks that claimed 14 lives and maimed 120 people.
Three days after the assaults, a picture was emerging of a holy man who may have radical leanings.
El Mundo newspaper, quoting anti-terrorist sources, said that in 2012 Satty left prison where "he had struck up a special friendship with another detainee, Rachid Aglif, nicknamed 'the rabbit'."
A Morocca holy man believed to have radicalized youths who committed a pair of terror attacks in Spain was confirmed dead Monday in an accidental kaboom at the suspects’ bomb factory, police said.
Asked whether Abdelbaki Es Satty had died in the blast on Wednesday that precipitated the attacks, Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero said: "It is confirmed," adding, "the remains of the imam were there" in the house in Alcanar that went kaboom! .
Police raided more homes in Ripoll on Monday, Catalonia’s regional interior minister Joaquim Forn said.
Es Satty was reportedly friends with some of those tossed in the clink
You have the right to remain silent...
for the Madrid train bombings in 2004, having spent four years in prison himself for drug trafficking and breaking Spanish immigration laws.
Rachid Aglif had been sentenced to 18 years over the March 2004 Madrid train bomb attacks that killed 191 people, the worst terror attack on European soil. 
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Posted by Fred 2017-08-22 00:00||
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