Seven Held in Spain, Morocco in Probe on Women Jihadists
Seven people were arrested in Spain and Morocco on Tuesday for allegedly recruiting young women via the Internet to join the jihadist Islamic State group fighting in Iraq and Syria.
Spain's interior ministry said four women, one of them a minor, and three men were arrested in Barcelona, Spain's North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta, and in the nearby Moroccan town of Fnideq, or Castillejos in Spanish.
"All of the arrested are accused of forming part of a network that recruited and sent women to the Syria-Iraq front to the terrorist organization Daesh," a statement said, using one of the terms used to designate the militant IS group.
The operation was carried out in cooperation with Moroccan security forces.
The group used social media sites such as Facebook to recruit the women, offering a "completely false and idealized vision" of their future lives in "what they call the Caliphate of the Islamic State," the statement added.
The group had so far managed to recruit 12 women, mainly from Ceuta and Melilla, targeting young women with poor job prospects who used social networking sites without much supervision.
The two men detained in Fnideq, just across the border from Ceuta, were the leaders of the network, Morocco's interior ministry said in a separate statement.
They were in contact with "Moroccan combatants in the heart of Islamic State who were planning attacks" in Morocco, it added.
Moroccan authorities believe more than 2,000 nationals, including some with dual nationality, are now fighting in Syria and Iraq with the IS group.
In September, the government approved a draft law to tighten anti-terrorist legislation, aimed particularly at stopping people from joining jihadist groups.
About 100 Spaniards have joined "militias" in Syria and Iraq, Spain's ambassador to Iraq, Jose Maria Ferre de la Pena, said last month.
Governments in Europe and elsewhere fear that battle-hardened Islamist fighters returning under the influence of groups inspired by al-Qaida may pose the threat of attacks.
Spain this year marked the 10th anniversary of the March 11, 2004, al-Qaida-inspired bombing of four packed commuter trains in Madrid, which killed 191 people.
Source: Agence France Presse
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