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Agents of the National Police put one of the five detainees in a vehicle in the anti-terrorist operation carried out last Monday in Catalonia and Andalusia. NATIONAL POLICE (Europa Press)
The National Police has dealt a new blow to the most radical Islamism settled in Spain with the arrest of five Pakistani citizens in Catalonia and Andalusia who encouraged, through social networks, to assassinate those who demonstrated against Islam, according to this report. Thursday the Ministry of the Interior.
The detainees, all in their twenties, were sympathizers neither of the Islamic State (ISIS) nor of Al Qaeda, the groups to which practically all of those arrested in Spain are related, but of a radical Islamist group of their country, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), with parliamentary representation and which advocates the implementation of Islamic law and the execution of those who are branded as blasphemers.
It is the first time that members of this group have been arrested for crimes of terrorism in Spain.
The investigation that has led to these arrests began after the attack committed, in September 2020, next to the former Paris headquarters of
Charlie Hebdo
, the satirical magazine that had already suffered a jihadist attack in January 2015 in which eight died. of their collaborators.
In that second attack, in which two people were seriously injured, Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud, a 25-year-old Pakistani who assured that his intention was to attack the publication again for his decision to re-disseminate the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, was arrested. .
The French police investigation found links between Zaheer Hassan Mahmood and the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan.
That arrest triggered the alert among Spanish anti-terrorist experts due to the fear of being faced with a new terrorist phenomenon, especially after learning that the detainee had maintained contacts with a compatriot based in Barcelona.
The Police then decided to subject him to surveillance, according to sources close to the investigation.
However, the investigations revealed that that first suspect did not represent any danger, but a third person resident in the Catalan capital with whom he was related.
The Police then decided to focus the investigation on the latter after verifying that, despite his youth - he has not yet turned 20 -, he had a great ascendancy over the rest of his compatriots with whom he was related and to whom he launched harangues in the who advocated the use of extreme violence.
The investigations have revealed that those now detained used social networks, mainly profiles on Facebook and Tik-tok, as an authentic propaganda device in Urdu (the language spoken in Pakistan) through which they disseminated audiovisual material, in part created by them, in which they praised the terrorist attacks that were being committed both in Europe and in Pakistan against those they considered blasphemous.
"They were very active and had numerous followers, and not only in Spain, but also in other European countries, such as France, Greece or Italy," sources close to the investigation point out.
It was the increasing reach of their radical messages that precipitated the arrests.
The alleged leader of the group was arrested in Barcelona;
another two, in Girona;
one more, in Úbeda (Jaén);
and the last, in Granada.
In the records of their homes, the Police have not located weapons or plans to commit a specific attack, but abundant jihadist material from the Islamic State in which threats against Europe and Israel were poured.
“They considered the brothers Chérif and Said Kouachi [authors of the attack against
Charlie Hebdo
] as heroes of Islam”, highlights the same sources.
In the operation, carried out by the Barcelona Provincial Information Brigade and the General Information Police Station, the National Intelligence Center (CNI) and Europol, the EU agency for police collaboration, have collaborated.
