Arabic teacher arrested in Madrid for recruiting minors for jihadism

The Guardia Civil has arrested an imam in Madrid who taught Arabic at a mosque in the capital. He is a 44-year-old man who took advantage of his position as a teacher to radicalise the minors he taught, and to recruit potential candidates for Daesh (Islamic State).

During the operation, two house searches were carried out in which computer elements were seized for later analysis.

The detainee has been placed at the disposal of the judicial authorities and the judge of the Audiencia Nacional has ordered his provisional detention.

The investigation began last year after detecting a person in Madrid linked to the jihadist ideology who was indoctrinating minors. These activities did not go unnoticed in the heart of the community where they were carried out, and generated a conflict that caused the person under investigation to be forced to leave the mosque, and continue with them in more private environments. 

The detainee defended before minors a violent vision of religion in the same terms as the main jihadist terrorist organisations. In his speeches he extolled the figure of the suicide bomber as a legitimate figure in the fight against Jews, Christians and apostates. These theories were expounded in the classes that the detainee gave to minors as an example of the conduct to be followed by all Muslims.

Currently, the terrorist recruitment of young people is one of the emerging phenomena at a global level in the field of jihadism, a fact detected in other recent Guardia Civil investigations as a worrying trend that needs to be tackled.

The work carried out by the Guardia Civil investigators, together with the active participation of analysts from the Europol agency, has made it possible to gather all the indications and evidence of the detainee's alleged terrorist activity. 

Since the upgrading to level 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Alert on 26 June 2015, the Guardia Civil has stepped up all investigations in the field of radicalisation and indoctrination, which clearly involve support for the structures of terrorist organisations.

The operation has been developed by the Information Service of the Guardia Civil, and is directed by the Central Court of Instruction number 2 and the Prosecutor's Office of the Audiencia Nacional.