Abdelbaki Es Satty

Abdelbaki Es Satty (Arabic: عبدالباقي إس ستي ‎) (1973 – 16 August 2017) was an imam in Ripoll who was born in Morocco in 1973 and arrived in Spain in 2002. On 21 August, he was confirmed to have died in an accidental explosion in Alcanar on 16 August, which began the 2017 Barcelona attacks. Satty is believed to have been the mastermind of the planned attacks and to have radicalised the twelve terrorists responsible into the Takfir wal-Hijra sect, which allows adherents to copy typically "Western" behaviour often forbidden in Islam in order to conceal their radicalisation and terror plans. However, he was also serving as an informant to Spain's intelligence agency, CNI.

On 16 August 2017, the house was destroyed in an explosion. Satty and another man, possibly Youssef Aallaa, died in the explosion.

Es Satty, who had been employed as imam at the Ripoll mosque since 2015, quit "abruptly" in June. He had also stayed in Belgium for some three months in 2016, where he had been searching for work, including in Vilvoorde.

He was convicted of drug smuggling in 2014 and was to be deported from Spain, but Es Satty claimed deportation violated his human rights and he remained in Spain. A successful asylum application in November 2014 facilitated him moving freely in the 26 EU countries of the Schengen area.

In 2012, the imam completed a four-year prison sentence for drug trafficking in Castellón. While in prison, he is reported to have established a "special friendship" with Rachid Aglif, who was serving an 18-year sentence for his role in the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

Es Satty was implicated in the 2006 Operation Chacal, in which five Islamists were arrested for sending jihadis to fight in Iraq. From 2003 he had shared an apartment with Islamists connected to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) and the 2003 Casablanca bombings.