MADRID: Spanish police on Friday detained a man they said had a close relationship with a number of those involved in last month’s attacks in Barcelona when militant Islamists used a van to hit pedestrians and carried out a follow-up attack, killing 16.
The Moroccan man, 24, is a resident in Spain and had connections to the Islamist cell which took part in the attack, especially the imam Abdelbaki Es Satty, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Police are looking at the man’s part in the acquisition of materials, specifically hydrogen peroxide, which was used in the manufacture of some 100 kilos of TATP explosives, the ministry said.
The cell had accumulated around 120 canisters of butane gas at a house in a town south of Barcelona with which, police said following the attacks, it had planned to carry out a larger bomb attack.
A blast that destroyed the house in the town of Alcanar on Aug. 16, the eve of the Barcelona attack, was accidentally triggered by the cell, police say. Satty, said to be the leader of the militant group, died in the explosion.
Six of the suspects were killed by police during the attacks and four have been arrested, with two held in prison.
Spanish police have arrested 201 people they claim are associated with militant Islamists since raising the alert level to 4, the second highest, in June 2015.
Spain police detain man accused of link to Barcelona attacks
Spain police detain man accused of link to Barcelona attacks
Iran hacking group claims attack on US medical company
- It issued an open warning to what it described as “Zionist leaders and their lobbies,” adding: “This is only the beginning of a new chapter in cyber warfare.”
WASHINGTON: An Iran-linked hacking group claimed responsibility on Wednesday for a sweeping cyberattack on US medical technology giant Stryker, saying it had wiped more than 200,000 systems and extracted 50 terabytes of data in retaliation for military strikes on Iran.
“Our major cyber operation has been executed with complete success,” Handala said in a statement, describing the attack as retaliation for what it called “the brutal attack on the Minab school” and for “ongoing cyber assaults against the infrastructure of the Axis of Resistance.”
The group said it had shut down Stryker offices in 79 countries and that all extracted data was “now in the hands of the free people of the world.”
It issued an open warning to what it described as “Zionist leaders and their lobbies,” adding: “This is only the beginning of a new chapter in cyber warfare.”
Founded in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Stryker is a global medical device giant with some 56,000 employees and $25.12 billion in 2025 revenues, making everything from orthopedic implants and surgical instruments to hospital beds and robotic surgery systems.
The Handala group later posted that it had also carried out an attack on Verifone, which specializes in electronic and point-of-sale payments.
The outages began shortly after 0400 GMT on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Windows devices — including laptops and mobile phones connected to Stryker’s networks — were remotely wiped.
