MADRID: A Spanish court on Thursday handed jail terms of up to 53 years to three men who helped the extremists behind the 2017 Barcelona attacks that killed 16 people.
The Daesh group claimed the bloodshed of August 17-18, 2017, when pedestrians were mown down by a van in Barcelona and others were attacked at a nearby seaside town as Europe was battered by a string of extremist attacks.
Following a three-month trial which began in November, the National Court convicted Mohamed Houli Chemlal, 24, and Driss Oukabir, 32, of belonging to the terror cell behind the attacks, handing them sentences of 53 years and 46 years respectively.
They were also convicted of the manufacture and possession of explosives and terror-related harm and damage, but cleared of 14 counts of terrorist murder and other charges in a ruling of more than 1,000 pages.
The third, Said Ben Iazza, 26, was handed eight years for collaborating with the group.
The sentences were longer than those requested by the prosecution which had asked for Chemlal and Oukabir to serve 41 and 36 years respectively.
Despite the length of their sentences, the judges said the pair would not serve more than 20 years behind bars.
Pere Aragones, who took over this week as political leader in the northeastern Catalonia region, said the carnage of that August “has marked us forever.”
“Today, more than ever, we remember all the victims and send our love to their families. And let’s not forget the work done in those days by security and emergency forces,” he tweeted.
Although the six perpetrators were shot dead by police, these three men were put on trial for helping the carnage which began when one of the extremists ran down pedestrians on Barcelona’s Las Ramblas on a busy Thursday, killing 14.
Hours later, just after 1:00 am on Friday morning, five others rammed pedestrians in Cambrils, 100 kilometers (60 miles) further south, and fatally stabbed a woman before being shot dead by police.
Several days later, the van driver was also shot dead by police.
During the investigation, Chemlal admitted the cell had initially planned to target sites like Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia basilica and police found documents also relating to the city’s Camp Nou football stadium and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
But their plans were sped up after an accidental explosion on August 16 at a house in Alcanar, a coastal town between Barcelona and Valencia where they had been preparing explosives.
The blast killed the group’s spiritual leader and injured Chemlal, forcing the cell to hurriedly improvise the Barcelona attacks.
In their ruling, the judges also said that Chemlal and Oukabir were banned from returning to Alcanar for 10 years after completing their sentence, with a five-year ban handed to Ben Iazza.
More than 200 witnesses were called to testify at the trial that both victims and prosecutors hoped would shed light on how the violence unfolded.
