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Police find explosive belt

Police in northeastern Spain said Wednesday they found a belt charged with real explosives in a house where a fatal explosion last week derailed the initial plans by an extremist cell to strike with bombs in Barcelona rather than vehicle attacks that eventually killed 14 people. A 15th victim was killed when one of the attackers made his getaway.

Six of the attackers shot dead by police — five on Friday and one Monday — were wearing fake suicide belts.

Chief investigating magistrate Fernando Andreu provisionally jailed two of the four surviving alleged cell members Tuesday after hearing testimony in the National Court in Madrid that the group had been preparing the massive bombs for an imam who planned to blow himself up at a Barcelona monument.

It wasn't immediately clear if the belt found amid remains of the blast in Alcanar, about 200 kilometres south of Barcelona, was meant to be used by the imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, who allegedly masterminded the attacks and recruited the others in the cell according to the testimony by the two jailed survivors.

The two —Mohamed Houli Chemlal, 21, and Driss Oukabir, 28— identified Es Satty as the ideological leader of the cell according to a Spanish judicial official who attended the proceeding and briefed journalists but wasn't authorized by the court to be identified in news reports.

Investigators believe that Houli Chemlal is key to shedding further light on the imam's role and plans as the only survivor in the blast in Alcanar where Es Satty and another cell member died last Wednesday, the official said.

Houli Chemlal was arrested in a hospital after surviving the blast. He told the court he was alive because he was on the outside porch of the house washing dishes after dinner.

Police had already found at the house more than 100 tanks of butane gas, nails that they planned to use as shrapnel, and 500 litres of acetone, a highly flammable liquid necessary to make TATP explosive.



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