Spanish police detains 3 suspected jihadists

Spain's national police force Monday detained two suspected jihadists in the northeast of the country, and collaborated with Moroccan security forces to arrest a third man in the Moroccan city of Tangier, the Spanish Interior Ministry said.

The arrests in Spain took place in Barcelona and Salou, both in the Catalonia region in the northeast of the country with the detainees described as "Moroccans aged 21 and 32, who were going to travel to the Syria-Iraq conflict zone to die as martyrs."

The arrest in Tangier was part of a joint operation with Moroccan security forces. Both operations are "the continuation of an important joint operation developed in October 2015 by the Spanish General Office of Information of the National Police and the Moroccan General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance, which has led to the detention of 10 people in Spain and Morocco, who carried out the job of attracting, indoctrinating and recruiting for DAESH (Islamic State)."

The Interior Ministry also said the two men arrested in Spain maintained "habitual contact" with other people previously detained in Spain for their membership in the Islamic State and with "important members" of the organization in the Syria-Iraq region.

Spain was placed on a high level of anti-terrorist alert in June 2015, and its security forces have arrested 162 jihadist terrorists in operations carried out in Spain and abroad, with a total of 207 arrests since the start of 2015. Endi