Europol supported Policía Nacional (Spanish National Police) in arresting a man in Ceuta (Spain) suspected of indoctrinating young people and promoting and disseminating jihadist terrorist propaganda. Police officers also carried out a search of his house.

In 2001, he was serving prison time and made contact with other prisoners who shared their radical ideas with him. Since then, he had been arrested several times for illicit arms possession, robberies and drug-related crimes. While in prison, the suspect tried to recruit young people to the extremist jihad and spread his extreme ideas to prisoners by offering them money if they grew beards, read the Quran and obeyed his orders.

The arrested man had been highly radicalised: he played loud jihadist songs, threatened people because of their sexual orientation and considered women inappropriately dressed. His high level of aggression, both in his behaviour and crimes, was very similar to other individuals who were radicalised in jail and who later carried out terrorist attacks.

Europol supported Policía Nacional investigators from the specialised Spanish Counter Terrorism Unit (Comisaría General de Información) by providing analytical support, social media analysis and deploying one expert from the Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Centre to Spain on the spot.

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