Members of terrorist cell arrested between Melilla and Tangier indoctrinated young people and held at least 50 meetings with young boys, many were minors in what Spanish investigators said was a hybrid modus aperandi.
The thirteen members of the cell, arrested on Tuesday, lured young men, mostly in Melilla into meetings in public places and parks that would ended “with auditions for nasheed musical themes aimed at inflaming jihadists,” according to sources close to the investigation who spoke to Spanish news outlet El Pais.
On Thursday, two judges who led the operation ordered the imprisonment of eight of those detained in Spain for their alleged links with the Islamic State, indoctrination and terrorist self-training.
The other three were released with precautionary warnings.
The investigation had begun at the end of 2020 after experts in the fight against terrorism observed a rise in Jihadist content on social media.
“Investigations took a turn when the agents detected that, in addition to the activity on social networks, the suspects – all men between 35 and 60 years of age – went a step further and summoned young people to hold meetings in different places in Melilla, including mosques and even outdoors in parks,” wrote El Pais.
Sometimes a few young people attended meetings, in others, the agents counted more than fifty attendees. Meetings would last a few hours and at times all day.
“The young people thought they were going to what they had been told would be a day of coexistence in which they would also do physical exercises,” El Pais said.
Members of the cell used the meeting “to launch a radical Islamist message to convince the attendees to become soldiers of Allah and carry out jihad.”
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