The victims of the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils on August 17, 2017 have today petitioned the Supreme Court to modify the sentence of the two members of the Ripoll cell and a collaborator so that they are also held responsible for each of the attacks. deaths.
The National Court sentenced three members of the jihadist cell that carried out the attacks on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, through a massive attack with a van, and on the promenade of Cambrils (Tarragona) to sentences of between 8 and 53 years in prison. for crimes such as membership in a terrorist organization or storage and manufacture of explosive and flammable substances or devices of a terrorist nature.
However, the Court did not hold them responsible for the 16 deaths because they were not the material authors of the massacre, and they were killed by the Mossos d'Esquadra. The Appeals Chamber of the Court reduced the sentences of two of them by ten years, from 53 to 43 years for Mohamed Houli, and from 46 to 36 for Dris Oukabir, for a technical issue.
The victims have always defended that they were members of the cell commanded by the imam of Ripoll, who died one day before the attacks due to the explosion of the Alcanar villa, where they hid the explosives. As a result of that explosion, the rest of the members of the cell decided to take a van and commit a massive attack, first on Las Ramblas and then on the Cambrils seafront. None of the accused were present at the attacks.
After the second ruling of the Court, the victims have gone to the Supreme Court to continue claiming responsibility for the attacks. At the hearing held today in the high court, and chaired by Manuel Marchena, the lawyers have asked the court to review the facts, although they are aware of the difficulty once they have already been acquitted of the terrorist murders in the first and second instance.
The argument supported by the accusations is that those convicted were part of a terrorist organization with the intention of committing attacks and therefore, although they were not the material authors, they are equally responsible for the deaths. One of the evidence is that they kept the explosives in Alcanar's house to commit an imminent attack. After losing the material due to a random explosion, the only thing the organization did – according to the accusations – was change plans and use a van to kill as many people as possible in the name of DAESH.
Among the victims are two police officers who were injured and for which they ask that they be sentenced not only for the deaths but also for the injuries. “The intent, the intentionality, is on the part of each of the members of the terrorist organization,” said a lawyer at the hearing.
The defenses of the three convicted men continue to maintain that they were not part of any terrorist organization and that they had no intention of committing attacks. “There is no membership in an organized gang. There was no leader, they were a group of friends, all equal. They did not have specific functions, nor permanence and stability over time,” explained Houli's defense.
In fact, the lawyer has clung to the theory that it cannot be ruled out that the Ripoll imam Abdelbaky Es Satty was not even in that house in Alcanar because the only thing that appeared after the explosion were some genetic remains.
In fact, that is one of the assets of the conspiracy theory fueled by some lawyers in which they maintain that the Spanish State was in some other way behind the 17-A attacks and that the imam was a confidant of the National Center. of Intelligence (CNI). “We are missing the fourth man,” said one of the lawyers who supports this thesis.
