Spain: Three Pakistanis Arrested For Glorifying Terrorism Over Internet

The Intelligence Headquarters of Spain’s Guardia Civil, together with units of the Intelligence Group of the Command in Lleida, arrested three Pakistanis of 25, 29 and 31 years of age in Lleida on Friday morning for glorifying terrorism and the dissemination of audiovisual propaganda of various terrorist groups.

The detainees ran various accounts on different social networks and digital platforms through which they carried out intense work disseminating Jihadi propaganda, even seeking to justify and extol specific activities of various terrorist groups.

The investigations made it clear that the detainees had managed to involve a growing number of people close to them in activities to glorify terrorist groups and justify violent actions, thus contributing to the propagation of the Jihadi ideology in Spain, according to the Spanish government.

Among the content disseminated, there was a significant volume of propaganda promoting DAESH (Islamic State), the Taliban and other Pakistani groups. Among this material, there were videos justifying executions carried out at the hands of DAESH, praise for figures of martyrdom, calls for the strict application of the “sharia” and comments against the Shiite community.

Within the framework of this investigation, which included collaboration from the National Intelligence Centre (Spanish acronym: CNI), officers have proceeded to search the premises of the detainees, at which they expect to uncover documentation and IT material that will allow them to determine the scope of the propaganda work online and determine whether the detainees form part of a larger-scale network, as well as the origin of some of the audiovisual content disseminated.