Morocco's collaboration with the National Police leads to the arrest of two jihadists in a municipality in Lleida
The detainees are accused of active terrorist indoctrination, recruitment and training to carry out attacks
The National Police have arrested two suspected jihadists in the municipality of Vallfogona de Balaguer in Lleida. According to a statement from the National Police, the detainees have been charged with the crimes of self-indoctrination, active terrorist indoctrination and collaboration.
Recruitment and indoctrination
The investigation that led to these arrests, carried out on Thursday, 14 August, began a year and a half ago, when counter-terrorism specialists detected a person who was highly active on the Internet and linked to websites of the terrorist organisation Daesh.
According to police information, the General Intelligence Commission carried out this investigation in collaboration with the provincial intelligence brigades of Lleida, Tarragona and Barcelona, under the direction of Central Investigating Court No. 1 and the Public Prosecutor's Office of the National Court.
The police also highlighted the cooperation received from the Moroccan Directorate General of National Security (DGSN), headed by Abdellatif Hammouchi, which contributed decisively to the arrests.
Sources close to the investigation have confirmed that one of the two detainees is a repeat offender and had shown a high degree of radicalisation, systematically and continuously accessing jihadist files, and acting as a vector for recruitment, indoctrination and self-training for the commission of terrorist attacks.
Both detainees have been brought before Central Investigating Court No. 1, which ordered the main suspect to be remanded in custody.
Early in the morning of 14 August, police officers carried out an operation that led to the arrest of the two individuals and the search of their homes, where various computer devices were seized and are now being analysed by experts from the National Police.
Moroccan collaboration
Cooperation between Morocco and Spain in the fight against terrorism has led to several operations in recent months, resulting in the dismantling and arrest of members of several jihadist cells.
In one of the most recent examples, at the beginning of February, the Spanish Civil Guard and the Moroccan DGST dismantled a jihadist cell responsible for indoctrination via the Internet, arresting a total of seven people in three simultaneous operations carried out in Toledo, Pontevedra and Madrid.
This investigation began with information provided by the Moroccan DGST and focused on a group of individuals in an advanced stage of radicalisation who were spreading jihadist ideology, including videos of Daesh executions and images of suicide attacks in conflict zones.
In the operations carried out in Pontevedra and Madrid, those arrested used their social media accounts, some with tens of thousands of followers, to spread jihadist propaganda hidden among physical training videos.
Now, these new arrests in Vallfogona de Balaguer confirm that the transfer of information between Morocco and Spain in the field of counter-terrorism continues to bear fruit.
