Police detain 4 in anti-jihadist operation

Spanish authorities arrested four people in the town of Badalona for their presumed relationship to a recruitment network which aims to send jihadist fighters to Syria.

The Spanish Ministry of the Interior confirmed the operation early on Tuesday morning in the town, which is just outside of Barcelona. They informed that the four people arrested were all members of the same family: a married couple and their twin sons aged 16 years old.

The two minors, reported the ministry, were on the verge of starting their journey to join the Islamic State in Syria via Morocco and Turkey and had already been in contact with other recruitment networks with the aim of easing their passage to their final destination.

This journey was to take place with "the full knowledge of those closest to them," said the ministry.

Spanish authorities also indicated that the twin brothers had previously left their schools in Badalona in order to study the Koran in an Islamic religious school in the Moroccan city of Tetuan, where they had "entered into a phase of radicalization."

The ministry added that in 2014, another son of the woman who was arrested had died in Syria fighting for the radical Harakat Sham al Islam group.

The mayor of Badalona, Xavier Garcia Albiol (Popular Party) reacted to the arrests on Tuesday morning by highlighting on local radio that the town was "a candidate" for radical Islamism given the "high numbers" of Moroccan and Pakistani immigrants who live there. Endit