Image of José Luis SC, alias 'Youssef', found by the Police on his social network profile after his first arrest, in December 2020.
When the National Police arrested him for the first time in December 2020, José Luis SC, who called himself
Youssef
, allegedly aspired to travel to Syria to become "the best sniper" of the Islamic State (ISIS in its acronym in English), as he himself had announced in different jihadist internet forums.
16 months later, and after having spent more than a year in provisional prison for those events, this 38-year-old Spanish convert had abandoned that idea to supposedly embrace another more worrying one: to manufacture small explosive devices and hide them in everyday objects to attack Spain, as detailed to EL PAÍS police sources.
A change in strategy that precipitated his arrest last Wednesday in the abandoned industrial warehouse in Las Rozas (Madrid) where he was spending the night, especially after the police found a farewell letter from him, similar to those that jihadists upload to social networks frequented by radicals before immolating themselves, in which he predicted that he would go "into history".
A judge of the National High Court ordered this Friday his admission to prison for the crimes of self-indoctrination and terrorist self-training.
The one baptized as Operation Taquylla that has led to Youssef's second arrest began last March after alerting the private security guards of a shopping center that an individual had kept a suspicious backpack in a locker.
Upon opening it to examine its contents, the police found a screwdriver, a knife, some
nunchucks
(weapon made up of two handles joined by a chain), three
flash drives
, two compact photo cameras and a mobile phone.
Along with this, a lot of ISIS propaganda material also appeared, including a poster with the legend “Islamic State will stand and expand God willing”.
Material found in the backpack that the alleged jihadist detained in Madrid hid in the locker of a shopping center. NATIONAL POLICE (Europa Press)
Much of that material was collected in two folders.
In one, instructions appeared to manufacture, among other explosive substances, triacetone triperoxide, a powerful explosive known as
mother of Satan
or TATP that is made with commonly used products and that was the one with which he intended to attack the Ripoll cell that committed the attacks of August 2017 in Barcelona and Cambrils.
The information had allegedly been compiled in a handwritten form in forums of the so-called
dark web
or dark internet frequented by jihadists.
According to the sources consulted, Youssef's interventions in these chats suggest that he ruled out making large amounts of explosives, since he asked about how to hide artifacts in small objects, specifically tennis balls and vases.
Press clippings from attacks were piled up in the second folder, including the one that cost the lives of eight people in New York in November 2017 after a jihadist ran over people traveling on a bike lane with his car.
The investigations of the agents of the General Information Police Station and the Provincial Information Brigade of Madrid allowed the alleged owner of the backpack to be quickly named.
It was about Youssef, a Spaniard converted to Islam in 2016 who, after undergoing a rapid process of self-radicalization through the consumption of jihadist propaganda on the internet, had already been arrested in December 2020. Then, the agents who infiltrate radical forums The internet detected how he developed intense activity on social networks, where he published content praising ISIS and had announced his firm will to travel to Syria, specifically to the Syrian city of Idlib, still under jihadist control, to join the violent group and train as a sniper.
After that arrest, he entered provisional prison accused of self-indoctrination and terrorist glorification, but a few months ago, he was released pending trial.
Since then, he was subject to "operational control" by the Police, as detailed on Friday by the Ministry of the Interior when reporting his arrest.
According to sources close to the investigation, during his time in prison, Youssef had become even more radicalized and when he was released he adopted security measures to avoid detection.
Among them was hiding the incriminating material in shopping center lockers — when he was arrested he was only carrying a knife — and continuing to sleep in abandoned buildings.
He had no contact with his family nor was he known to have any work.
To connect to the internet, he went to public booths.
Last Wednesday, the Police decided to arrest him, considering him "a threat", according to Interior details.
Investigators feared that Youssef was planning to attack shortly as Easter was approaching.
So far this year, there are already 18 suspected jihadists arrested in Spain.
A squat without a family, without a job and without a social life
José Luis SC,
Youssef
, the alleged jihadist arrested last Wednesday in Las Rozas (Madrid), has no known family, nor is there any evidence that he had worked or had social relations of any kind.
He lived alone as a squat in abandoned buildings, some of them dilapidated.
The Police are still investigating how he obtained the means to survive (he believes that he could receive some kind of pension), since he was also not detected committing a crime while he was under surveillance the days before his arrest.
In addition, he had no criminal record, save for his first arrest in December 2020 for self-indoctrination.
His profile is, in fact, far from the one drawn by the statistics of detainees for jihadism in Spain.
The annual report prepared by the International Observatory for Studies on Terrorism (OIET), presented last March, pointed out that, although there is no "unique profile", there are common characteristics.
Thus, one in three of the 39 detainees for jihadism during 2021 was between 18 and 24 years old —Youssef is 38 years old— and the majority (42%) were of Moroccan nationality, followed by Algerians.
Only nine of those arrested were Spanish and, in addition, three of them were of Syrian origin who had acquired nationality through legal residence.
The study also reflected that 14 were unemployed, like the one now arrested.
However, unlike him, a part of them had turned common crime into their source of income to survive.
Regarding the terrorist group that inspired them, the study concluded that the majority (27) followed the postulates of the Islamic State, —such as Youssef— and five, those of Al Qaeda.
In addition, 11 had links to other individuals previously detained for terrorist activities and five to so-called foreign terrorist fighters.
In the case of Youssef they do not appear.
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