• Terrorism More than 200 Islamists sentenced in Spain since 11-M

  • Yasin Kanza The smile of the murderer who wanted to impose his radical creed with machetes

Since the 11-M attacks aroused fear of Islamist terrorism in Spain, the Security Forces have carried out

365 operations

against jihadism that have resulted in 1,091 arrests,

963 in Spain and 128 abroad

in connection with operations activated in our country.

The latest operation took place on the 12th and left two arrested in

El Ejido

(Almería) and another in

Morocco

.

The annual number of arrests reflects two clear peaks that coincide with the two major attacks, that of 2004 in

Madrid

and 2017 in

Catalonia

.

In the months following the attacks on commuter trains, 131 suspected jihadists were arrested, and 92 the following year, still in the wake of 11-M.

Coinciding with the attacks in

Barcelona

and

Cambrils

came the third highest number of arrests: 75 suspected terrorists.

Apart from these specific episodes, another piece of information clearly marks the frequency of police operations and the absolute number of those arrested: the approval in 2015 of a reform of

the Penal Code

that allowed arrests to be anticipated and action against those who were becoming radicalized before they reached the attack preparation phase.

Its entry into force meant that the operations of

the National Police

and

Civil Guard

tripled: from an average of 10 before the reform to thirty.

Data from last year show 27 operations with 46 detainees.

The sentences handed down by the

National Court

have exceeded 300, which means that a majority of the arrests have ended in file or acquittal.

Despite everything, the

Security Forces

consider that in these cases a potential danger has been rotten to "neutralize", in particular that of those known as lone wolves, which the world jihadist leaders activated as an alternative to the system of organized cells, easier to target. to detect.

Until what happened in Algeciras, there was only one investigation opened for a terrorist murder in the National Court that pointed to a lone wolf.

It is about the hit-and-run in

Torre Pacheco

(Murcia) that left a deceased, in addition to the alleged terrorist.

The cause is under secrecy.

Social media

The reform of the Penal Code of 2015 indicated in its Statement of Reasons that jihadist terrorism was generated "through charismatic leaders who disseminate their messages and slogans through the Internet and, especially, through the use of social networks, [... ] calling on his followers around the world to commit attacks.

"The recipients of these messages may be individuals who, after their radicalization and indoctrination, attempt to carry out attacks against the designated targets, including suicide bombings," he continued.

"It is evident that the new threats require updating the regulations to accommodate the phenomenon of individual terrorism," he indicated, referring to possible cases such as Algeciras.

Anticipating the police response to be able to arrest those who were becoming radicalized ran the risk of colliding with the presumption of innocence, but the reform passed the judicial filter.

In 2018, the Supreme Court addressed the figure of the "individual terrorist".

"It is manifested to us in the phenomenon of terrorism as a kind of external terrorist

outsourcing

, in the way of subcontracting outside the organization to carry out activities of external collaboration with it."

The following year, the High Court already expressly mentioned the figure of the lone wolf, in which, in the initial stages of the investigation, the detainee is located in Algeciras: «The objective of the terrorist organization is to have these individual terrorists who act from different countries to recruit people related to the terrorist cause and recruit them for the final execution of the terrorist act, from which the expression of the terrorist lone wolf has emerged, which must be framed in the group of people who access these contents that they collect and facilitate internet terrorists, to capture them and be duly indoctrinated in their hatred of those who do not participate in the terrorist ideology.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Algeciras

  • National audience

  • supreme court

  • Civil Guard

  • National Police

  • Morocco

  • Almeria

  • 11 M