The National Intelligence Center (CNI) ruled out Abdelbaki Es Satty as a confidant in 2014, three years before the imam of Ripoll planned the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, after meeting him three times in prison. The reasons were the total lack of “reliability” or “trust” that Es Satty generated in his interlocutors, as recorded in the minutes of those interviews that the Government has declassified.
The declassification of CNI reports on the attacks was one of Junts’ demands in the negotiation with the socialists for the 2025 budgets, which have not yet been presented. The work of the investigation commission into the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils on August 17, 2017 began this autumn and the withdrawal of secrecy was one of the Government’s gestures towards Junts.
The documents provided to Congress confirm what had already been alleged by the former director of the CNI in the official secrets commission in 2018. That is, that the CNI, like the Civil Guard, met with Es Satty in prison in compliance with the jihadism surveillance protocol. Between 2012 and 2017, the CNI conducted 46 interviews of this type.
Es Satty was arrested in 2010 for trying to bring 130 kilos of hashish into Spain. He was convicted and while he was serving his sentence in Castellón prison, the CNI came to visit him to see if they could recruit him as an anti-terrorist source. The imam was an old acquaintance of the security forces, since, although he was never arrested or charged, his name did appear in an anti-terrorist operation against leaders of a mosque in Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona).
In the three interviews that the CNI held with Es Satty in prison, one of the objectives was for the imam to give more details about that case. “He is a very opaque person, he has barely shown interest in anything,” reads the declassified record of the first interview in prison carried out on March 17, 2014 by a CNI agent, who describes Es Satty as “very distrustful.” .
A month later the second interview took place in prison. “Es Satty gives the impression of wanting to play with his knowledge and that of his interlocutors,” describes the second declassified CNI report, which also highlights that the imam “tried to evade” the “total emptying of his knowledge” that the agents attempted. of intelligence.
The last interview was no better either. Es Satty, as described in the document, showed “great distrust” towards his interlocutors and skirted the questions about the Vilanova cell, according to the minutes of that interview. “He is an individual who cannot be trusted or trusted at all,” the agents concluded. There were no more interviews after his release from prison in June 2014.
The conclusions of the three interviews, together with the analysis of Es Satty’s lyrics carried out by CNI personnel, came to the conclusion that the imam was not valid “for any information activity for the benefit of the missions assigned” to the center, as stated In 2018, the former director of the center Félix Sanz Roldán, whose appearance has also been declassified, participated in the official secrets commission.
After leaving prison in May 2014, the CNI continued to monitor Es Satty for the rest of the year, but did not observe “conversations, activities or contacts that would allow us to deduce a plan to carry out terrorist attacks in Spain.” Nor did he provide “information of interest” to the telephone number that, as all security forces usually do with their informants, the agents gave him in one of his interviews in prison.
In short, neither in his interviews in prison nor in his subsequent surveillance did the CNI detect that Es Satty had any activity that could deduce that he was preparing a terrorist attack. In February 2015, two months after he stopped being one of the CNI’s targets, Es Satty arrived in Ripoll.
The attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in 2017 already have a final judicial ruling. The attacks, organized by a cell led by Imam Es Satty, caused 16 deaths and more than 300 injuries in two attacks on Barcelona’s Rambla and the Cambrils seafront. Despite the finality of the court rulings, Junts leaders have launched conspiracy theories that cast doubt on the imam’s death, contrary to all the evidence collected in the investigation.
The former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, has used the new declassified reports to relate the attacks to the sovereignty process. In a message on X, Puigdmeont denounces something that the CNI never denied: his interviews, which Puigdemont describes as “deals” with Es Satty in prison. The former president omits, however, that the CNI refused to recruit Es Satty as a collaborator.
Source: www.eldiario.es
