The Spanish Civil Guard arrests a Daesh sympathizer in Madrid
New strike against jihadist terrorism in Spain. The Guardia Civil on Thursday arrested a 48-year-old Guinean sympathizer of Daesh who was using social networks to post threatening messages against the King or the director of the National Intelligence Centre, among others. The Guardia Civil has issued an official statement in which they explain that this man was publishing on his various social network profiles - mainly Twitter - messages with "threatening, insulting and/or defamatory" content against various state institutions and public figures.
In these messages, the detainee included direct references to terrorist organizations such as Daesh and published typical iconography of them. However, the most serious crime for which he has been arrested is for encouraging attacks against some of Spain's most important political figures, including the current King, Felipe VI, among his targets, according to information provided by the Guardia Civil.
This man had previously been arrested for various offences such as robbery with intimidation. For this reason, the detainee, who is originally from Guinea-Bissau, is considered by the Spanish authorities as " a dangerous and unstable individual". Furthermore, this individual, who had previously been in prison for committing various violent crimes, was failing to comply with the confinement measures decreed in Spain to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. After being released in 2015, this man will be transferred to the competent judicial authority.
"This individual has a great knowledge of the functioning of social networks in general, and of their influence on Spanish society in particular, which can be deduced from the inclusion in their messages of hashtags or labels of great popularity in our country (television programmes, Spanish politicians, State institutions, etc.) with the aim of giving greater visibility to their contents," warned the Guardia Civil in an official statement.
Social networks have played a fundamental role in the communication strategy of terrorist organizations such as Daesh. Furthermore, during the last few weeks, the Civil Guard and other similar authorities have warned that "Daesh is instrumentalizing the current situation of health alert by urging his followers and sympathizers to take advantage of this moment to commit attacks in Europe". A document published in the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies warned in 2016 that "in 2014 alone, ISIS had more than 40,000 related accounts on Twitter". So, thanks to this strategy and their ability to adapt to new trends, at a speed that counter-terrorism is not capable of, they manage to reach a very large audience, spread their actions, implant fear and attract followers".
"Within an open, free space as difficult to control as the web, groups like Daesh have managed to create a centralized, highly controlled and planned communication campaign. There is hardly any room for improvisation. Thus, although there are figures such as the media lone wolves, everything that concerns the main communicative tasks has its origin mostly in a certain number of leaders. They send carefully planned messages both in terms of date and content, in terms of subject matter, objective and audience," explained researcher Mª Eugenia Tapia Rojo in the IEEE. Four years later, social networks still play a very important role for terrorist organizations like Daesh. Faced with this situation, the Civil Guard has launched several research projects aimed at detecting threats associated with this circumstance and preventing these possible actions.
This arrest comes just ten days after the National Police arrested one of Europe's most wanted Daesh terrorists in Almeria. This man known as Abdel Majed Abdel Bary had become a key figure in the Syrian-Iraqi conflict, having earned a reputation as a very violent criminal. This operation was coordinated from the General Information Commissariat with the Provincial Commissariat of Almeria, the National Intelligence Centre and security forces from other countries and culminated with the arrest of two more people.