The judge extends the detention of the young Moroccan until Monday so that the investigation can specify whether he was only consuming jihad propaganda or was incited to attack by networks
The National Police have 48 hours to determine if the detainee in Algeciras for “crime of murder and injuries for terrorist purposes”As determined by the judge, received instructions or someone encouraged him to attempt against Christianity in the name of jihad, acting with violence in two churches. The first conclusions suggest that he acted alone, without the support of any Islamist cell, and had mental disorders.
The 25-year-old, Yassine Kanjaa, was transferred Thursday night to the General Information Police Station in Madrid where he will remain until Monday. The judge of the National Court Joaquín Gadea has agreed to the request for extend police detention for 48 hours, extension foreseen in cases of terrorism, which raises it to a total of five days. While the judge attributed the attacks to “jihadist Salafism”, Interior insists that all possibilities are open and admits a terrorist act but avoids talking about jihadism. Kanjaa is arrested for the machete murder of the sacristan of the Church of La Palma, Diego Valencia, and for injuring the Salesian priest with serious injuries Antonio Rodriguez Lucenowho has already been discharged from the hospital.
The murdered sacristan was buried this Friday in Algeciras after receiving hundreds of shows of respect and condolences to his family from his neighbors and relatives. His burning chapel remained all morning in the Church where he had been sacristan for 16 years. The president of the Board, Juan Manuel Moreno, attended the wake and later the funeral, together with the mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce. No member or representative of the Government of the nation attended the funeral. The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, did visit the Church and showed his condolences to the family the day before.
The mayor of the city reported that Algeciras will dedicate a square in homage to the victim, who was very loved in different areas due to his links to the world of brotherhoods and carnival and who died at the age of 60 defending the Church where he spent a good part of his days collaborating. For years he ran a flower shop, leaving a widow and two daughters. The city is still in shock after a long tradition of peaceful coexistence with an Islamic community that exceeds 15,000 people, in a city that registers more than 129 nationalities.
radical propaganda
The material intervened in the ‘squatter’ house where the detainee lived and the chats located on his phone are being analyzed to see if Kanjaa was radicalized only with the jihadist propaganda material that he consumed or received instructions and was captured by an organization that manipulated him to attack It is also about determining against the clock, admit sources close to the investigation, if someone else participated in the planning of the event.
The fact that the chosen churches were very close to the address where he was spending the night and the hasty and apparently improvised chronology of the events give an idea that the planning was “crude & rdquor; and had no help. The detainee first broke into a church, had a heated discussion with some parishioners, returned an hour later, at the end of the mass, armed with the machete with which he seriously injured the priest and stabbed the sacristan to death in another nearby church, and he tried to enter a third chapel that was closed. The investigators handle that the murder of the sacristan was “a mistake & rdquor; and that his objective was the priest of La Palma. It will also be important to determine since when he had the weapon, a large katana-type machete, with which he attacked and for what purpose he acquired it.
A ‘lone wolf’
Those responsible for the investigation will have to determine if Kanjaa was a ‘lone wolf’ responding to jihad or if someone encouraged or inspired him to act. The forensic psychiatric examination It will also determine if the detainee had mental disorders that conditioned his criminal conduct. Interior handles information from Morocco indicating that the young man had a record in his country for psychiatric problems. The companions of the patera apartment where he was staying, just 250 meters from the Plaza Alta de Algeciras where he was attacked last Wednesday, described to the Police that Kanjaa had changed his character in recent months to become a sullen boy with strange behaviors. that he was turning towards a religious extremism that he did not practice before. They also pointed to drug use. The investigators of the case point out that he began to show his radicalization on social networks a short time ago and did it in a “childish” way, as they describe.
The chief prosecutor of Algeciras, Jesús Cisneros, assured that the mental disorder does not exempt from the terrorist crime, although they could change the prison sentences for internment in a psychiatric center, if this diagnosis is confirmed. In an interview on ‘La Hora de la 1’, on TVE, the prosecutor considered that even if he had “his faculties totally annulled or partially altered”, he does not exempt him from an alleged crime of terrorism and that “precisely the fact that he was not in full conditions & rdquor ;, if that is determined, it may have “more vulnerable to radicalization processes & rdquor ;, by turning it into a person “more manipulable and easier to direct in a certain direction & rdquor;.