A squatter house with 500 kilos of explosives

More information“This is the venom we are going to give the enemies of Allah”

The Ripoll terrorist cell, which perpetrated the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils on August 17, 2017, prepared for weeks in a house in an urbanization of Alcanar (Tarragona) between 200 and 500 kilos of explosives with which they wanted to blow up several vans to cause as many deaths as possible in a jihadist attack. The Mossos d'Esquadra (Tedax) artificers found 19 hand grenades inside the house, a real explosive vest, almost intact, plus the 104 butane cylinders that were intended to be used as shrapnel in the explosion, as well as screws , nails, flanges... And also electronic material, such as a camera with videos and images of the terrorist cell.

With her, the group was recorded while making the explosives to cause a massacre in Barcelona. The agents suspect that the main target was the Sagrada Familia. They chose acetone triperoxide, known as mother of Satan and by its acronym in English TATP. To do this, they bought huge amounts of hydrogen peroxide in various stores in Catalonia and Valencia, acetone and other precursors.

The young people began practicing in an apartment they had rented in Ripoll (Girona). There they kept the substances to make explosives to which only Younes Abouyaaqoub, the author of the attack on La Rambla, and Mohamed Hichamy, who participated in the Cambrils attack, had access. The apartment was rented by another of the terrorists, Youssef Aalla, who is seen in the recovered images of Alcanar posing with the explosive vest.

Internet Manuals

When the young people saw that the apartment, which they had rented for two years, was too small for them, they occupied Alcanar's house. The Tedax suspect that the terrorists learned from old manuals and Internet pages. "The manufacture of the explosive fits with different manuals found on the Internet, signed by different producers associated with Daesh, as well as the idea of ​​using improvised hand grenades with very short-lived fuses so that possible victims cannot flee," says the report. of the specialists.

Although they were self-taught, the Mossos consider that they had acquired the "necessary knowledge" to manufacture explosives and, therefore, wore protective gowns, gloves, goggles, a thermometer... "They knew the danger of what they were manufacturing, given the security measures used in its preparation, such as not using anything metallic, in this case using plastic basins and pillowcases for filtering, drying and transporting it”, he adds.

After checking the house, the agents have concluded that the group prepared the explosive in the bathroom of the property, using the bathtub, just as the terrorists of the London Underground attack did in 2005, to carry out mix. With the pillowcases they filtered the substance and cleaned the excess acid with sodium bicarbonate solution. In addition, they served to transport it. Then they took those same covers outside, and spread them out on some mattresses to dry.

The final part consisted of spreading the substance on brown butcher paper, which, as seen in the images, was dried with fans. Once they had the final product, a part of this explosive was used to fill the improvised hand grenades and the tubes of the explosive vest. The rest was saved for the day of the attack.

Based on the 56 pillowcases found and the amount that fit in each of them, the possibility that they have been reused and the statements of one of the survivors, the agents suspect that they could have manufactured between 200 and 500 kilos of explosives in reach.

The terrorists worked with scant resources to carry out their plans. They sold family members' jewelry, used material from the place where they worked (one of them was employed in a forge), and they did so appearing normal in their surroundings. In the images, they mock and threaten their future victims: “To suffer. Enemies of Allah!” "Every gram of this iron is going to get into your heads or your children's or your women's," another of the terrorists is heard saying. "This is the poison that we are going to put out for the enemies of Allah to taste."

Two witnesses incriminate Driss Oukabir

Two protected witnesses confirmed on Monday before Judge Fernando Andreu their incriminating testimonies against Driss Oukabir, one of the survivors of the cell that perpetrated the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks. One of these witnesses, named in the A3 summary, is a French citizen residing in Alcanar (Tarragona), the town where the chalet was located where the jihadists manufactured the explosive that accidentally exploded and killed three. A3 affirmed that he saw Oukabir —currently imprisoned— and Younes Abouyaaqoub, author of the massive outrage and killed days later, several times in that house.

The second witness, A1, is the waiter at a bar in Tona, a town between Ripoll and Barcelona, ​​where they met the day before the Oukabir and Abouyaaqoub attacks. As he detailed, in that meeting the first led was trying to convince his partner of something. Oukabir has always denied belonging to the cell.