Spain Judge Charges Four Suspected Jihadists

A Spanish judge on Monday remanded in custody three suspected Islamists and conditionally released a fourth on terrorism charges, a judicial source said.

Police arrested the four Spaniards -- two pairs of brothers of Moroccan origin -- in the Spanish territory of Ceuta bordering Morocco on Saturday.

The government said in a statement that they had "a very similar profile" to the killers in this month's Islamist attacks in France, but made no material link between the two cases.

The four went before Spain's National Court, where Judge Pablo Ruz ordered three of them to be detained and the fourth to surrender his passport and check in with the court weekly.

They are charged with belonging to a terrorist group and illegal possession of arms, the judicial source said.

Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz on Saturday compared the suspects to Cherif and Said Kouachi, the brothers who killed 12 people in an attack on the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7.

The Ceuta suspects resembled the Paris attackers in their "physical and psychological preparation and their skill in using weapons", he told reporters.

The Spanish suspects also had a "firm determination... to commit an attack and if necessary sacrifice themselves and die in the attempt".

Police seized a nine-millimeter automatic pistol and machetes among other items during dawn raids on two properties, the interior ministry said.

They were the latest in a string of arrests in Ceuta and Spain's other north African territory, Melilla, where authorities have been monitoring suspected extremist cells.

The ministry said the four who appeared in court on Monday were inspired by online messages from the armed Islamic State (IS) group, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria.

Spanish police have arrested about 50 suspected jihadists over the past year, the ministry said this month. Many of them are suspected of joining IS or planning to.