How Members of the Islamic State-Linked Ripoll Cell Grouped, Radicalized and Plotted Mass Casualty Terrorist Attacks in Barcelona

Abstract

Members of the so-called Ripoll cell plotted mass casualty attacks to be executed in Barcelona on August 20, 2017. Instead, some of them improvised vehicle-ramming and stabbing attacks earlier in Barcelona and Cambrils, also in Spain’s Catalonia. Who were those jihadists and how did they form an attack cell? What explains their radicalization into Salafi-jihadism? How did they prepare mass casualty attacks? The article’s three sections address these questions, mostly drawing from primary sources. As analyzed in the first section, the cell, formed by 10 men, nine of them young adults and adolescents born or raised in Spain, descendants of Moroccan immigrants, was built by an imam with past jihadist leanings who acted as entrepreneur. As explained in the second section, the radicalization leading to terrorism underwent by these individuals was highly contingent upon both in person exposure to a radicalizing agent as well as preexisting kinship and friendship ties. Finally, as substantiated in the third section, members of the Ripoll cell performed the plot’s six tasks, from financing and securing attack preparation to selecting the terrorist modality and targets, in a remarkably articulated and coordinated way consistent with its IS-linked nature.