Two more arrested in Spain for relations with Islamic State

Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz confirmed from Brussels on Friday that two more people had been detained in Spain for their possible relationship with Daesh (the Islamic State).

This is the second operation against would-be jihadists in December after a man was arrested in Pamplona as he prepared to travel to Syria.

The arrests took place at the Martutene prison in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa in the north of Spain, where both of those detained were already serving sentences for minor offences.

One of those detained was a 24-year-old Moroccan, while the other was a 32-year-old from the Basque town of Zumarraga. The interior ministry did not ruled out making further arrests as investigations continue.

One of the signals which apparently altered security forces is that one of the pair posted a video of himself burning his passport on the Internet. This is a ritual carried out by many jihadists to show their willingness to travel to Syria to fight for the Islamic State.

The arrests took place on the same day as the Interior Ministry launched its Twitter campaign #StopRadicalismos (StopRadicalism), which allows citizens to alert security forces with total anonymity by Internet, phone or text message of people who may have become radicalized. Fernandez Diaz described the initiative as "key to detecting cases of radical jihadism." Endit