The National Police has arrested four people in the framework of an anti-jihadist operation, as sources from the investigation confirm to El Confidencial.. The work is carried out by the General Information Commissioner, who accuses those arrested of an alleged crime of terrorist indoctrination within the framework of social networks..
The sources consulted by this newspaper affirm that the suspects had been under the radar of the security forces since at least 2022.. After this operation, those arrested will be placed at the disposal of the National Court, which has coordinated the work and has determined that three of them will go to prison..
The arrests have occurred in Madrid, Cubelles (Barcelona) and Huétor Tájar (Granada) for jihadist proselytism on social networks. Three of them were carried out last Wednesday and the fourth this Thursday in Huétor Tájar, where the members of the General Information Commissariat of the National Police arrested a 22-year-old young man for his links to jihadist terrorism through social networks..
🚩Operation against #jihadist terrorism
4 arrested for proselytism and #jihadist recruitment on #SocialNetworks in #Granada #Barcelona and #Madrid
The leader of the group massively consumed violent content and used #RRSS to recruit and indoctrinate other people pic.twitter.com/K637hEMb2Y
— National Police (@policia) October 20, 2023
The head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 5 of the National Court, Santiago Pedraz, has decreed this Friday the provisional detention for three and freedom with precautionary measures for the fourth, in this case the one arrested in Madrid. According to the General Directorate of the National Police, investigators have verified how these people, linked through closed social media groups, had suffered a radicalization process..
Caliph, the founder
The investigation began in 2022, when experts in the fight against terrorism detected the so-called Caliph, who was the creator and administrator of several groups in which he tried to indoctrinate young people in the jihadist creed.. The Caliph energized his followers and created private groups to which he invited the radicals with whom he established greater trust and in which they spoke openly about the terrorist cause..
The monitoring of these groups allowed the identification of other members of the group, all of them young, who were interconnected with each other, although they did not know each other physically..
Two of them strengthened their ties and ended up getting married, with the authorization of the group leader and began to live in the same home..
This new relationship was a turning point in the investigation, since it was detected how both exponentially increased their level of radicalization, recording videos in which they demanded “shed blood to recover Al Andalus and restore the Caliphate.”.