Spanish police focused on returnees jihadists

USPA NEWS - The Spanish police have intensified surveillance over a hundred Spanish citizens recently returned from Syria and Iraq after fighting in the ranks of IS. After the massacre of Paris on Wednesday, Spanish authorities are now focused on them, in an attempt to prevent terrorist actions.

The Spanish Government is concerned about the support the IS receives Spanish citizens, especially in the North African cities of Ceuta and Melilla, and in the peninsular regions of Catalonia, Valencia and Andalusia. In particular, the authorities are concerned about the change of strategy in attracting followers: before it was done in mosques and now concentrates on social networks. Therefore, the Brigade of Technological Investigation of Police has been strengthened to try to detect the pages where Spanish citizens are called to join the Jihad.

Spain is the European country where they have conducted more actions against jihadism and where it has arrested more terrorists. Since March 2004, the Spanish security forces have arrested 519 suspected Islamic terrorists, nearly a hundred of them over the last year. But what catches the attention of researchers is the growing presence of women and even lower among those captured by the IS. Last December, police dismantled a network that had managed to recruit 12 women to send to Syria, in order to marry them fighters IS. Among those arrested was a minor.

Only during 2014, seventeen Spaniards died in Syria and Iraq fighting in the ranks of IS. Another 36 are still there eight returned to Spain, of which seven have been arrested and are in jail. Like many others, the most recent of these Spaniards captured by jihadism what went through Facebook. Police sources said a USPA News that social networks, offering more privacy mosques have become the new center of recruitment of Islamist terrorism.