Private prosecutors ask Supreme Court to bring murder charges for 2017 terror attacks 

Private prosecutors reiterated in Spain's Supreme Court on Wednesday that the three men convicted in relation to the August 17, 2017 terror attacks on Barcelona's La Rambla and in Cambrils should also be charged with murder. 

According to the lawyers of several injured police officers, the three men were key to the attacks which killed 16, and they therefore must be tried again. 

Mohamed Houli Chemlal and Driss Oukabir are currently serving prison sentences of 43 and 36 years respectively, after Spain's National Court reduced their initial sentences by ten years. 

Defense lawyers have asked for the men to be acquitted or their sentences reduced. 

The third man convicted, Said Ben Iazza, was sentenced to eight years for collaboration with a terrorist organization, but has already been released from prison. 

The public prosecutor's office has asked the Supreme Court to uphold the National Court ruling. 

Private prosecutors – which include the Catalan government, Barcelona and Cambrils local councils, victims' groups and others – were divided, with some in favor of maintaining the current sentences and others arguing for a retrial that would include terrorism-related murder charges. 

National Court ruling 

In July 2022, Spain's National Court reduced the sentences of the two main surviving perpetrators of the attack 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. 

They were originally convicted in May 2021. 

Houli and Oukabir were 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 was convicted of collaboration with a terrorist organization.   

None of them were found guilty of murder, since they did not directly intervene. 

Commemoration  

In August this year, the sixth anniversary of the terror attacks that left 16 dead and more than 140 people injured was marked. 

A commemorative event took place in the morning at Barcelona's Joan Miró mosaic on La Rambla boulevard, the place where the van that plowed through a busy crowd finally stopped.   

Survivors and relatives of victims laid white carnations while a cellist played the traditional Catalan song, 'El cant dels ocells' (The Song of the Birds).