The judge of the National Court Joaquín Gadea has ordered the entry into provisional prison and without bail of Yassine Kanjaa, arrested on Wednesday as the alleged perpetrator of the machete murder of the sacristan Diego Valencia in Algeciras (Cádiz) and for injuring four other people after attacking two churches in the city of Cádiz.
The police transferred this Monday to the National Court the arrested man, a Moroccan national and 25 years old.
After interrogating the suspect, who he has declared in an open summary for alleged jihadist terrorism, the investigator has accepted the request of the Prosecutor's Office and has ordered the imprisonment of the accused, who allegedly became radicalized in barely a month.
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The judge, on the attacker from Algeciras: "He looks up to heaven, shouts Allah and deals him one last fatal blow"
Prosecutor Emilio Miró charges Kanjaa with a crime of terrorist murder, another of attempted terrorist murder and another of terrorist injuries.
According to sources from the public ministry, among the reasons that have justified the request for provisional detention are the risk of flight, concealment of sources of evidence and criminal repetition.
Although the cause is kept secret, the National Court has provided some details: "The evidence gathered supports that the activity carried out by Kanjaa can be classified as a directed jihadist attack, both against priests who profess the faith of the Catholic Church and against Muslims who for the investigated they do not follow the precepts of the Koran”.
In the letter where, on the same Wednesday, he authorized the search of Kanjaa's home, Judge Gadea already considered the attack as an alleged crime of murder "for terrorist purposes", and linked it to "jihadist Salafism", the supremacist current Islam that despises other religions.
The investigator added that the detainee intended to "disturb public peace by carrying out acts of terror, which could have motivated criminal action."
With this provisional classification, the investigations remain in the hands of the National Court, a court to which the law exclusively reserves the investigation and prosecution of terrorism cases.
Yassine Kanjaa, last Wednesday after her arrest.
According to the instructor, Kanjaa had never appeared on the radar of the anti-terrorism services: “He was totally unknown to the Police.
Not only was his religious rigor unknown, but he had not been involved in any type of altercation or incident, ”explains the magistrate.
However, in the opinion of the judge, this does not prevent "at this time, based on the evidence collected, a process of religious radicalization that triggered the events that occurred in Algeciras."
The Court has detailed this Monday some of the evidence against the detainee, which suggests that he underwent a "radical" change in the last month or month and a half.
His roommates have narrated that he drank alcohol and smoked hashish, and that in recent weeks he began to "assiduously listen to the Koran through audio from his mobile phone."
In the words of the judge, he suffered a process of express "radicalization" and "self-indoctrination", which "fully coincides with what was observed on his social networks."
The agents have also investigated whether Kanjaa, on whom a deportation order passed, had "some type of mental disorder" and if he "acted alone".
Gadea points out that he apparently did not have the help of third parties.
"This has been acknowledged by the detainee himself, both in court and before the police, pointing out that he has not been directed by other people and that he has not sworn allegiance to any terrorist organization or group," the National Court stressed.
The magistrate has insisted that the alleged jihadist is capable of reproducing and remembering his attacks on Wednesday.
"The conduct of the investigated was conscious and he has defined his objectives," adds the instructor, who emphasizes that he chose his victims "deliberately."
"He acknowledges that his intention was to kill all the priests who were in the church," the court points out, which specifies that he also attacked "a Moroccan whom he considers unfaithful, believing that he was a convert and whom he attacked with the intention of killing him." ”.
For all these reasons, according to the judge, Kanjaa carried out "his action in the name of the jihadist phenomenon to which so many adhere remotely, generating a violent attack that causes terror in society and destabilizes social peace."
"[The detainee] maintained and maintains an implicit commitment to his vision of Islam, finding himself fully radicalized after an ideological indoctrination that could be described as 'rapid' and that has ended with the commission of violent actions against other people, consciously and intentionally provoking the greatest possible damage, maintaining control of the situation at all times”, Gadea concludes.
Until now, the Ministry of the Interior had been very cautious.
The head of the portfolio, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, stated last Thursday that Kanjaa "has never been on the radar of a national service for radicalization, nor in any of the databases of the different close friend countries where he has resided ”.
Marlaska never used the term "jihadist."
This Monday, the ministry has sent a statement in which it refers to the detainee as an "alleged jihadist."
The attack
The first investigations by the police pointed out that, on the afternoon of last Wednesday, Kanjaa went to the church of San Isidro with intentions that are "unknown" and there he started "a discussion" with the parishioners present, to whom he insisted "vehement way" in which "the only religion to follow is Islam."
According to the documentation sent by the agents to the judge, the alleged jihadist then left the place "professing messages in Arabic whose content is unknown";
and he returned around 7:40 p.m., when the faithful heard how someone stationed outside the temple "professed shouts in Arabic."
"Once the mass is over," the judge continued in the resolution to authorize the search, "the priest in charge of it [Antonio Rodríguez] comes down from the pulpit to check what was happening, at which point the person under investigation, holding in his hand a large machete suddenly attacked the priest causing serious injuries.
The attacker then fled the scene and headed towards the church of La Palma, located in Plaza Alta, a place that is usually very crowded in the center of Algeciras.
There he ran into Diego Valencia, the murdered sacristan: "At that moment, Yassine Kanjaa began several attacks on him, causing him some initial injuries."
The victim tried to run away, but the alleged terrorist caught up with him and, once he had her on the ground, he "holds the katana with both hands and,
Allah
["Allah"], strike him one last death blow."
Friends of Diego Valencia transferred his coffin, last Friday, after his funeral in Algeciras. Carrasco Ragel (EFE)
The instructor describes how, then, the suspect went to the chapel of Our Lady of Europe, located in that same square, to "try to access the interior."
The police detained him there, without his “resisting”, and during his transfer to a medical center for treatment he uttered “shouting '
Allahu akbar
[Allah is the greatest, in Arabic]”.