This Friday has passed to judicial disposition in the National High Court a jihadist of Moroccan origin arrested a few days ago in his hideout in Mataró (Barcelona), where he had managed to return after participating as a volunteer foreign combatant in the wars in Syria and Iraq.
The detainee has military training, as confirmed by the Police, and combat training. He is part of a couple of jihadists with ties to Spain, arrested in the same operation in recent days, after they used the Balkan route back to Europe. The second is arrested in Austria, by virtue of a European Arrest Warrant issued by the National High Court in the framework of the investigation carried out by the General Police Information Commissioner.
The Central Investigating Court 6 of that court instructs the investigation into this case and has determined the imprisonment of the detainee in the Catalan town. The two Moroccans had toured Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. One of the two managed to continue the trip to Mataró.
Followed from Turkey
The two captured jihadists are syrian war veterans, in which they had participated since 2014. Both are of Moroccan origin. The detainee in Mataró was residing in the city when in 2014 he answered the call of fundamentalism from the Middle East and enlisted in groups related to Al Qaeda, as reported by the Police on Friday.
the other arrested left Morocco for the Syrian front in 2015, and has relatives residing in Spain since that same year. Both fled Syria after the fall of ISIS, in 2019, and had refugee in turkeythe usual waiting country for numerous FTFs (Foreing Terrorist Fighters, or foreign terrorist fighters, an acronym by which this type of collaborator of radical Islamist terrorism is called) waiting to be able to return to Europe.
The Police Information Station had news since last January of the intention of these two individuals to enter Spain clandestinely. His route has been followed by CNI agents and the Valencia and Barcelona Police Information Brigades. Europol, the US FBI, the Austrian and German police and the DGST, the Moroccan information service, have also collaborated in its monitoring.
Very dangerous
The figure of combatants returned from Syria and Iraq or Afghanistan is one of the main concerns of the State security forces in matters of Islamist terrorism. They are men who have experience in handling weapons and explosiveshardened in combat, very radicalized and with a high probability of attacking on their return to Europe.
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Barcelona is a frequent place of return. In December 2018 he was arrested also in Barcelona another former jihadist combatant who had managed to enter the country following the Balkan route. And in 2021, also in Barcelona, the Police neutralized two Algerians who had fought for DAESH on the Syrian front.
During the confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic, in April 2020, the Police caught a Abdelmajid Bari, jihadist with British nationality returned from Syria who had hidden with two subordinates in an apartment in the Andalusian city after arriving in Spain by boat from Algeria. Police consider him extremely dangerous. In his time as a fighter in Syria he spread a photo of him head posing of one of his victims in the hands.