Suspected jihadists arrested in Barcelona Spain while trying to purchase a rifle

Several suspected jihadists have been arrested in Barcelona Spain while trying to purchase a rifle.

Spanish police have arrested three suspected members of a jihadist cell in Barcelona and one in Madrid after one of them tried to buy an assault rifle for an alleged potential attack, according to a report from Reuters on Wednesday, October 13.

A fifth cell member was already in prison serving an unspecified sentence and is suspected of being a part of the same plan.

Officers report finding three machetes and ammunition in the house of the group’s leader, identified only as “Sheikh”, who had been previously arrested in Turkey in 2016 after attempting to enter a conflict zone and join the Islamic State.

The suspect later travelled to several countries such as Malaysia, Tanzania and Algeria, where he continued to recruit for the Islamic State, the police said. Spanish police first detected his presence in Barcelona in March 2021, after he contacted a gang of young Algerians who robbed tourists and who later “showed strong signs of radicalisation”.

The activities of jihadist groups remain a priority for police in Spain after Islamist militants used a van to plough into a crowd of pedestrians in Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard in August 2017, later carrying out a follow-up attack in another municipality, killing 16 people in total.

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THE leader of a Jihadi terrorist group that murdered 15 people in August 2017 on Barcelona’s Rambla, was allegedly an informer for Spain’s secret service, the CNI.

Abdelbaki Es Satty allegedly stayed in touch with the service right up to when the attack was carried out. The CNI apparently knew that a terrorist group based in the Catalan town of Ripoll was preparing an attack.

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