Arrest of 4 Family Members in Barcelona with Suspected Syria Jihad Ties

by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi  •  Mar 31, 2015 at 6:50 pm

From El País (31 March 2015: translated from Spanish by me):

"The Civil Guard has detained this early morning in Barcelona four members of one family, whose two minor sons, twins of 16 years old, were about to leave for Syria to join the ranks of the Islamic State. One of their brothers, by the name of Yassin Atanji, had already died fighting last year with Harakat Sham al-Islam, a jihadist group founded by Moroccans that also fights in Syria. The twins were preparing their departure for Syria via Morocco for this same morning, as reported by the Directorate for Information of the Civil Guard. The two young men had already been in contact with members of recruitment and sending networks to facilitate their journey via Turkey, and were going to take advantage of the movement of tourists during Holy Week to pass by as undetected as possible.

The two detained minors, who had left their academic education in Barcelona to undertake Qur'anic studies in a madrasa in Tetuan (Morocco), were immersed in a process of radicalization with the full knowledge of their most direct environment, especially the mother, who had another son who died in the same conflict in 2014 as part of the terrorist group Harakat Sham al-Islam. For the two twins, Yassin was a 'martyr' they wanted to emulate. The Civil Guard explains that the detained were already being investigated for "the high level of radicalization that their immediate environment presented," above all the mother. The operation remains open to these hours in the neighborhood of Llefia in Barcelona, a peripheral enclave with a strong presence of immigrants, in which the family lived...This is the fourth raid against jihadists recruitment networks in a year, the last on 13 March, in which 8 were arrested in Barcelona, Avila, Girona and Ciudad Real."

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