Poster with the appointment of Hassan K. by the TLP party in Spain. National Police
Hassan K. hid a handwritten page in his room in an apartment in Barcelona that could become a Rosetta stone for the Police.
The paper in the possession of this 19-year-old Pakistani, with a bushy beard that contrasts with an almost invisible mustache and jet-black hair parted in two, has put the researchers on a clue: the existence, in Spain, of a formal structure of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a legal party with parliamentary representation in the Asian country that promotes beheading those who blaspheme against Muhammad.
The document, written in Urdu, contains a list with the names, telephone numbers and positions of the 15 main people responsible for the TLP in Spain, according to research sources.
In addition to a "supreme chief" (the only one unidentified), there is a president (or "emir") and a vice president.
But also, like the parties to use, "commissioners" of different matters: finances, politics, administration, security, legal advice, social affairs and even public relations.
Hassan, who lives with his parents and siblings in an apartment in Barcelona's Poblenou, does not appear on the organization chart.
But he aims high.
In April 2021, Hassan sends an electoral poster to a WhatsApp group informing of his appointment as “communication secretary of TLP Spain-Catalonia”.
The poster features photos of some of the party's self-proclaimed "martyrs" and of El Sheik Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a former government official expelled for his radical sermons who, in 2015, founded the TLP to defend the validity of the controversial Law of Blasphemy in Pakistan.
The objective of the party is to ensure that offenses against Islam are "punished with the death penalty throughout the world", according to the reports of the National Police Corps in the case opened by the National High Court against Hassan and against four other young people who, presumably, they promote those same postulates from Spain.
The information services show their concern about a group of "extreme danger" that has been widely welcomed "among young Pakistanis residing in Europe."
After a process of "radicalization", warn the reports, some of them have been perpetrators of attacks in Pakistan and France.
Most of these boys come from the Punjab, in whose capital, Lahore, the preacher Rizvi was born until his death from illness in 2020, when he was succeeded by his son Saad Hussain.
Hassan and the other investigators, residents of Catalonia and Andalusia, published on Tik Tok, Facebook and Instagram videos with fragments of the radical speeches of the Rizvi, who in 2018 brought thousands of people to the streets in Lahore to get it executed in the hanging of Asia Bibi, the Christian sentenced to death for insulting Mohammed.
The party glorifies perpetrators of attacks committed to avenge alleged offenses against the prophet.
Like Zaheer Hassan Mahmood, who stabbed two people in front of the Charlie Hebdo
headquarters in September 2020
in Paris following the satirical magazine's announcement that it would republish cartoons of Muhammad.
Or Abdullah Abuyedovic Anzorov, who just a month later beheaded the French teacher Samuel Paty at the gates of the Bois d'Aulne school (northwest of Paris) because he had taught those same caricatures in a class on freedom of expression.
A video on La Rambla
The summary, which EL PAÍS has accessed, shows that those investigated also produced their own material.
Touseeq H., 25, a resident of Castelló d'Empúries (Girona), and Muhammad S., 24, a resident of Úbeda (Jaén), recorded a video together that they posted on Tik Tok in which Muhammad "makes a gesture with his hand outstretched as a sign of cutting the neck”, according to the police interpretation.
The video was recorded during a walk along La Rambla in Barcelona, which in 2017 was the scene of the 17-A jihadist attacks, in which 16 people died.
The most active in networks - he manages eight different profiles - is Hassan, who expresses his desire that certain punishments in force in Afghanistan (such as amputations) reach Spain.
On one occasion, he asks a compatriot living in France to find him photographs of Emmanuel Macron's home.
"I don't speak French, please check the information on Google and give it to me, I want its location urgently," he writes.
The petition seems a bit
naive
, but it shows to what extent the French president is one of the black beasts of the anti-blasphemy party and a recurring target of the Rizvi.
On freedom
The five Pakistanis investigated were arrested in February "because of the risk that they could carry out an action," says the Police, which however does not provide a single clue in that regard.
Preventive arrests are a common way of proceeding against jihadist terrorism, which sometimes leads to legal cases lacking solid evidence.
The judge of the National Court Joaquín Elías Gadea ordered the entry into prison of the five young people for three terrorism crimes that have been dismantled, in part, by the lawyer Benet Salellas, which has allowed them to be released provisionally.
Salellas has shown the roots of the boys in their cities and has proven, with a letter sent by the Pakistani embassy in Madrid, that the TLP is a "legal" party in the Asian country and "participates in electoral processes at the local level , provincial and state.
The Prosecutor's Office has admitted that it does not appear on the list of terrorist organizations of the EU or of any other transnational entity.
The National Court believes that this circumstance "weakens" the indications of the crime of recruiting for integration, the only one of the three crimes raised - together with glorification and dissemination to incite to commit attacks - that carries high prison sentences (from five to ten years) and that could justify the risk of flight.
There can be no recruitment if there is no terrorist organization.
The court believes that there are signs, for now, of glorification, which is punishable by lesser penalties (from one to three years in prison).
National Police
The embassy admits that the TLP was temporarily suspended for “a short period of time” after the riots that triggered the release of Asia Bibi in October 2018. For several days, followers of the radical movement lynched policemen, caused destruction and paralyzed the activity of the country, especially in the Punjab.
The leader, Rizvi, encouraged the population to rise up against the head of the Army and assassinate the judges of the Supreme Court.
He was arrested for terrorism and sedition, and two years later, a hundred of his followers were sentenced to heavy prison terms.
The party's ban on activity was issued in April 2021 under the Pakistan Anti-Terror Law, but was lifted just seven months later with the TLP's commitment to "not disrupt public life", according to the embassy.
In the report sent to the judge, the Police consider that its express legalization was due to the "pressure" of the group during those months, in which the riots were reproduced, with deaths and injuries in Lahore.
The researchers have no doubt that TLP is comparable to groups such as Al Qaeda or the Islamic State because, like them, they "manipulate the religious sentiment" of young people.
Although settled in Spain, Hassan and the rest of those under investigation closely followed the ups and downs of their country's politics.
When the TLP was banned, the communication secretary attended a small demonstration in the Plaza de España in Barcelona.
Defense sources point out that, despite the fact that their day to day was in Barcelona, Castelló d'Empúries, Úbeda or Granada, the boys were still mentally installed in the social, cultural and political reality of Pakistan.
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