The Civil Guard has located and rescued a Spanish minor who disappeared earlier this month and who was living in the town of Verviers (Belgium, 55,000 inhabitants) in the home of a 34-year-old jihadist who had captured her, indoctrinated with terrorist material and that he was supposedly going to send her to a conflict zone, according to a note released this morning by the armed institute, which has not provided details of the minor's place of habitual residence or her age.
The man has been arrested.
The young woman had left the family home on July 2 for Belgium "in the company of people belonging to an alleged terrorist recruitment structure based in that country", according to the investigations of the Civil Guard Information Service in the fight against jihadist radicalization.
The family did not know the fate of her minor.
The trip supposedly culminated a first stage of indoctrination, in which the man, of Belgian nationality, had been sending "constantly" propaganda material of a terrorist nature to the minor to radicalize her.
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Once the escape was completed, the Civil Guard and the prosecution and the Central Court for Minors of the National High Court tried to locate the minor "before the possibility of her transfer to a stage with terrorist actions," the note states.
The investigators of the armed institute, together with the Belgian Federal Police, managed to find the whereabouts of the young woman.
On July 15, the man was arrested in the Belgian town of Verviers, and the Spanish minor was immediately released, on whom a European and International Arrest Order had been issued by the Central Court for Minors of the National High Court. .
Preventing the recruitment of minors by jihadism and avoiding their sending to conflict zones is one of the key missions of the anti-terrorist services in recent years.
In fact, they are still scattered around refugee camps, mainly in Syria, and many women captured by these networks when they were minors and who now also have children as a result of their submission to Islamist radicals, are still awaiting repatriation.
France, for example, repatriated at the beginning of this month 35 minors of French nationality and 16 women from the camps in northeastern Syria, where relatives of jihadists linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group are being held.
Since 2016, Paris had only repatriated 126 minors, the Collective of United Families denounces.
According to their calculations, in 2021, 97 European women and children were repatriated.
Only seven of them were French, all minors.
From January 1 to July 4, other European countries had repatriated 65 children and 27 women, none of them French.
Spain, with 17 children and three women (plus one of Moroccan origin, but with children of a Spanish father) housed in the camps in northeastern Syria, has not carried out any repatriation.