ERC and Junts demand that the National Council of Nationalists (CNI) explain whether it paid 500 euros a month to the Ripoll magnet.

BarcelonaRipoll imam Abdelbaki es-Satty was paid €500 a month by the National Intelligence Agency (CNI) as an informant before the 17-A attacks. This is what the newspaper explained on Monday. Abc, and the independence movement has already rushed to once again request the appearance of former secret service director Félix Sanz Roldán before the commission of inquiry opened in Congress. Sanz Roldán's statements have been changing: during his visit to the Lower House, he stated that Es-Satty "had never been a collaborator or informant" for the intelligence services, but the classified documentation provided by the CNI revealed that contact had been maintained with the imam after his release from prison; however, payments were processed through the Girona office.

The same news item makes it clear that the CNI was never aware of Es-Satty's intentions, and that he never named the terrorists who carried out the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils. The imam provided "anodyne" and "valueless" information, according to sources consulted by the ABC, who completely reject the conspiracy theory that the secret services participated directly or indirectly in the 17-A attacks. What they do admit is that the CNI concealed its relationship with Es-Satty until the very end, but nothing was known about his terrorist intentions.

However, the reactions of the parties have not been long in coming: once the news was published, the Esquerra Republicana group in Congress announced that it will file a document asking the board of the 17-A commission to summon Sanz Roldán again. The leader of the group, Gabriel Rufián, denounced in a tweet to X that "the worst attack in recent history in southern Europe was partly financed with public money that was paid to an informant." As for Junts, which is fueling the conspiracy theory, it requested the appearance of the liaison officer (RO) with Es-Satty, who was supposedly the one who gave him the money, and also the former head of the Girona Counterterrorism Division, Luis García Terán, currently secretary general of the CNI.

He has also spoken about it in Radio Estel Former Catalan Interior Minister Joaquim Forn, who asserted that the information "did not surprise him." According to Forn, the heads of the Interior Ministry had "lied outrageously" in the Congressional committee. "They knew there was more to the relationship between the CNI and the imam, and now it's being proven," he said. The former minister emphasized that, leaving aside the political aspect, people need to know the "truth" for "the victims' sake."

An accusation without evidence

A few months ago, in the same commission of 17-A, Mohamed Houli, one of those convicted for the attacks, He stated that "the CNI was aware of the imam's intentions."Despite acknowledging that he had no evidence and that the statement was merely a "conjecture," according to his version, the intelligence services "allowed" Es-Satty to go to Ripoll to "mess around with them." "I'm saying this now and not before for fear of reprisals or that it could harm me, but I'm already convicted and I have nothing to lose," he told the deputies of the commission of inquiry into the 17-A incident, reading from a notebook, handcuffed and under police surveillance. The sources consulted by the newspaper Abc They point out that this statement by Houli was prepared ad hoc for endorsing the theses of Carles Puigdemont's party, but which do not correspond to reality.