Spain is fighting a new wave of “homegrown” extremism, raiding cells and hunting radicals on the internet as scores of Spaniards join fighters in Syria and Iraq.
Ten years after al Qaeda-inspired bombings on Madrid commuter trains killed 191 people in March 2004, Spanish authorities are tackling a new wave of extremists.
“We are seeing the hatching of homegrown militancy,” said Fernando Reinares, one of Spain’s top terrorism experts, at a gathering of specialists in Madrid this week.
“This is not new in Britain and France, but it is new in Spain and Italy.”
Reinares estimates that about 60 fighters have travelled from Spain to join extremists in Syria and Iraq in the past three years.
Spain’s ambassador in Iraq, Jose Maria Ferre de la Pena, this week said about 100 Spaniards had joined “militias” in conflict zones.
That is fewer than the hundreds from Britain, France and Germany who are thought to have gone to Syria to join the violent group calling itself Islamic State (IS).
But the relatively sudden emergence of the phenomenon has shocked Spanish authorities, who have arrested dozens of suspects accused of planning to join IS.
The group controls large swathes of Iraq and Syria and has killed several western hostages.
The latest video it has released showed extremists beheading 18 Syrian prisoners and a US aid worker, Peter Kassig. Two Frenchmen were identified among IS members.
That video “must make us more alert than ever, because the globalisation of this group is an undeniable threat”, Spain’s junior security minister Francisco Martinez said this week.
Among the suspects arrested in Spain is a 14-year-old Spanish girl who was detained in August as she tried to enter Morocco allegedly en route to join IS, judicial sources said.
Spanish authorities have also identified hundreds of online profiles of radicals who support the group and who mentioned Spain in their messages, said Martinez.
In the latest case, the government said police on Wednesday arrested a Moroccan in Spain’s southeastern Murcia region accused of “notable extremist activity on the internet” and of trying to travel to Syria to join a “terrorist group” there.
Martinez said a wave of arrests of online suspects over the summer had prompted the government in September to intensify its level of vigilance for attacks.
Spain’s military is currently helping train Iraq soldiers to fight IS, making the country a potential target for revenge attacks by extremists, the government warns.
