The National Police has arrested four alleged jihadists in different provinces of Spain, who were connected to each other through closed social media groups. Those arrested—two of them in Cubelles (Barcelona), another in Madrid and a fourth in Huétor Tájar (Granada)—had undergone a high radicalization process, which is why anti-terrorist agents have proceeded to arrest them due to the risk of attack, as confirmed by police sources to La Vanguardia.
The investigation began in 2022, when researchers detected the so-called "Caliph", in charge of creating and managing several groups in which he tried to indoctrinate young people in jihadism.
The "Caliph", a 22-year-old young man who was arrested in Granada, energized his followers and created private groups to which he invited the most radical. Once in those groups they spoke directly about the terrorist cause, as reported by the National Police.
The monitoring of these groups allowed the identification of the rest of the detainees in this operation who did not physically know each other. Two of them do. They had strengthened their ties virtually and ended up getting married, with the authorization of the group leader. Once the marriage was formalized, they lived together at the same address in Cubelles (Barcelona) where the arrests were made.
According to experts in the fight against terrorism, this new relationship was "a turning point", since it was detected that the couple "exponentially increased their level of radicalization", recording videos in which they demanded "shed blood" to recover Al Andalus and restore The Caliphate. She is 31 years old and her husband is in his early twenties, according to police sources.
The head of the central investigative court number five of the National Court, Santiago Pedraz, has decreed this Friday the provisional detention for three and freedom with precautionary measures for the fourth.
Spain has remained at level four of terrorist alert since 2015 despite the fact that some sectors of society have asked in recent days to increase it to the maximum (to five) as a result of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The acting Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, meets this Friday with the parliamentary groups of the Congress of Deputies to analyze the terrorist threat to Spain as a consequence.
The Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Pérez, addressed a few days ago to the top officials of all police forces to inform them that all agents must take extreme self-protection measures against possible terrorist attacks.
