Alleged jihadist recruiter arrested in Melilla dawn raid

Officers from the National Police in Melilla have arrested a Spanish man accused of capturing and indoctrinating women in order to send them into Islamic State combat areas.

The arrest comes as a continuation of the police operations carried out in August and December last year in Ceuta, Melilla, Barcelona, Arrecife and Morocco, which have led to the arrest of a total of 11 people.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior has confirmed that the detainee was believed to be in the habit of showing his own son, a minor, radical jihadist material to familiarize him with the tactics as well as dressing him completely in black, giving him a huge machete and teaching him to obey only 'Sharia' law.

Documents seized have established links between the detainee and women shown to be involved in the network.

The man arrested today is accused of recording radical sermons inciting people to disobey all laws not included in the Islamic 'Sharia' law, to have no contact with infidels and to reject all government other than that of the Caliphate, the system imposed by the so-called Islamic State.

The Ministry of the Interior stressed the importance of these arrests, claiming that they had prevented the capture and indoctrination of numerous groups of women, many of them minors, and had paralysed the radicalisation processes being carried out by those arrested.

Today's arrest was not without its complications: the raid, in the Las Palmeras area of Melilla, lasted several hours, ending just before five o'clock this morning, and saw police officers and journalists involved in numerous altercations with the neighbours, especially when leaving with the detainee. Stones were thrown and some police vehicles were hit.

The housing estate, very close to the La Cañaada de Hidum and Reina Regente estates, where previous anti-terrorist operations have been carried out, was temporarily plunged into darkness during the raid, when neighbours apparently sabotaged the electricity supply in order to make the police officers' job more difficult.

This latest police operation took place just hours before the Interior Minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, was due to host a conference in Melilla called "The State versus Jihadism" and is the second operation against jihadist terrorism carried out in Melilla this year.