3 suspects arrested in France with links to Catalonia terror attack

MADRID - French police, in collaboration with Spanish police, have made three arrests in connection with Catalonia's terrorist attack, which occurred last August in Barcelona and Cambrils.

These three men are suspected of being linked to Driss Oukabir, who is now in custody due to his alleged membership to the terrorist cell perpetrator of the attacks. The detentions were made in the southern French regions of Tarn and Gard.

After the terror attacks, one of the main lines of investigation was to identify possible connections of the members of this terrorist cell outside Spanish borders.

Since June 26, 2015, when the Spanish Ministry of Interior raised the terror alert level to four out of a maximum of five, some 227 "jihadist terrorists" have been arrested by the Spanish armed forces, both in Spain and abroad, the ministry said.

Investigators expect that these three arrests will help clarify connections between these three men and the terrorists involved in the August 2017 attacks, when a van mowed down people on Barcelona's famous Las Ramblas street.