National Court reduces sentences of La Rambla terror attack perpetrators

Spain’s National Court has reduced the sentences of the two main surviving perpetrators of the August 17, 2017, La Rambla terror attack.

Their sentences have each been reduced by ten years, meaning they will now serve 43 and 36 years behind bars, as opposed to 53 and 46, after they appealed their initial sentencing on technicalities. 

The court sentenced Spain's Mohamed Houli and Driss Oukabir in May 2021, while also giving Said ben Iazza 8 years in jail.

Houli and Oukabir have been found guilty of belonging to a terrorist organization; possessing, stockpiling, and manufacturing explosives and flammable substances or devices that are terrorist in nature; and attempted criminal damages of terrorist intent in combination with 29 offenses of grievous bodily harm due to serious negligence. Ben Iazza, meanwhile, was convicted of collaboration with a terrorist organization. 

Yet, none of them were found guilty for the murders, since they did not directly intervene. 

Role of convicted individuals

Houli and Oukabir were brought to court for allegedly belonging to the jihadist cell behind the 2017 attacks, although they did not directly participate in them. Iazza is on trial for aiding the cell without being an active member.

Houli was arrested in hospital while still healing from wounds suffered in an explosion that took place in a house in the town of Alcanar, southern Catalonia, on the eve of the attacks. Mohammed es-Satty, imam of Ripoll and thought to be the ringleader of the cell, died in the house where explosives were being made.

Oukabir was detained in Ripoll. The van used by Younes Abouyaaqoub – who was shot a few days after August 17 by Catalan police – was rented under his name. While he claims to have no links with the terrorist group, some of his private messages suggest he may have joined the group some weeks prior to the attacks, but gave up on the plan at the last minute.

Saïd ben Iazza was arrested on September 22, a month after police officers interviewed him as a witness in Vinaròs, a Valencian town close to Alcanar. He told officers he knew two members of the cell because they frequented his uncle's butcher’s shop, where he worked. He admitted to lending them his ID and a car, but denied knowing that they were going to use it to buy the raw materials needed to make explosives.

16 deaths in summer 2017 terror attack

On August 17, 2017, a white van drove into a crowd gathered on Barcelona's La Rambla boulevard, causing chaos, injury, and deaths. The attacker fled in a stolen car after killing the driver. Hours later, after midnight, five other men stabbed a woman in a nearby seaside town.

In all, 16 people died and 140 were injured. All men directly responsible for the attacks were eventually killed by police. But they were later found to be part of a larger jihadist cell – one that was preparing attacks on an even bigger scale.