On the lookout for jihadist threat in Spain: 52 arrests and a focus on Africa

The security forces have arrested 52 suspected jihadists in 25 operations in 2022, most of them carried out by the National Police's General Intelligence Commissariat, which remains on the lookout to "defuse early" a possible attack and is closely watching the terrorist expansion in Africa.

Those responsible for the fight against jihadism in this general police station give an assessment to EFE of a 2022 in which its personnel have arrested 40 people. The figure is similar to that of the years prior to the pandemic, but far from the arrests made during the peak years of the Daesh and the arrival of fighters in Syria or Iraq, such as 2015 or 2017.

Nevertheless, they say that a higher or lower number of arrests cannot be equated with a higher or lower number of cells, or even with an increase in radicalisation. Most of the operations - 18 by the National Police alone - culminate in few arrests and are the result of lengthy investigations.

They do admit that it is not so frequent for a single operation to produce a dozen arrests, as has been the case with the most important operation this year, which after many months of investigations led to the arrest of ten people in Melilla, one in Granada and another two in the neighbouring country in October, in collaboration with Morocco. 

Police officials stress their importance for several reasons. On the one hand, many of those arrested were old acquaintances in this general police station, which reinforces the police consideration that deradicalisation in prisons is not something that works.

"But not in Spain, I don't know of any deradicalisation plan that has really succeeded in a prison", says one of the police commanders.

In addition to the background, the dismantled network's mission was to indoctrinate mujahedin aged 12 or 13, some of them their own children, whom they taught with jihadist chants that they spread through social networks but which they also internalised in parks and squares.

For the police, the internet continues to be a very useful vehicle for radical content, but they claim that its open dissemination on social networks is more restricted since European police under the protection of Europol and the platforms put a stop to any message of radical glorification.

"Now it is not so easy for them to work in the virtual apparatus. They have to resort more to the deep internet or private forums", they tell EFE, while face-to-face radicalisation has not been left aside after the pandemic either, as the October operation shows. 

In fact, the imam of the white mosque of La Cañada de Melilla, the third "leg" of this important operation along with recidivism and minors, played a prominent role in the cell. The leader introduced "very radical" messages in his sermons, which were then discussed in greater depth outside the mosque.

The commanders do not intend in any way to point the finger at the imams as being responsible for sowing this radicalism among their followers. They make it clear that there are around 2,000 mosques and that the presence of radical imams who deliver these messages in their "khutba" (sermon) is "punctual" and "very minor".

"Institutional Islam is the first to ensure that its religion does not harbour them", they say, which is why it is sometimes the faithful themselves who warn of these speeches, which do not always have to be directly related to jihadist postulates. They can go against democratic values such as the rights of women or homosexuals.

In any case, these speeches can put security at risk and can therefore be subject to administrative expulsion - without prior trial - as envisaged in the law on foreigners.

The police counter-terrorism headquarters defend the guarantees of this procedure, which in recent months has been carried out with Islamist radicals based in Catalonia and Talayuela. Expulsions to their countries of origin amounted to 17 this year, much lower than the 28 that were carried out in 2019. 

Experts in the fight against terrorism have been warning for more than a year about the expansion of jihadism in the Sahel region and the Islamic Maghreb as one of the greatest challenges for European security, especially in Spain, as it is the only country with land borders with Morocco.

They prefer not to reveal data, but they are concerned that this area of great instability, with failed states and a great deal of chaos, could be a focus of attraction for foreign fighters with the strengthening of jihadist ideology after the fall of the Islamic State in Syria, another country they are watching very carefully to control the return of possible fighters who are not known whether they are alive or dead.