The two accused of consuming and spreading jihadist propaganda on networks acknowledge the facts and plead guilty

One of them apologizes and "thanks God for having entered prison" to realize his mistakes

MADRID, 23 May. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The two accused of consuming Islamic State (DAESH) propaganda and spreading jihadist content on social networks have acknowledged this Monday in the trial that the facts have been held against them in the National High Court and have pleaded guilty, accepting one year and three years in prison respectively.

"I had no idea what I was doing. I apologize; ignoring what I was doing, ignoring the consequences, here I am. Thank God that I entered prison to know that what I was doing was wrong," Mohamed said. B., who has finally accepted three years in prison instead of the seven and a half years that the Prosecutor's Office initially requested for a crime of terrorist recruitment and indoctrination.

In his final turn, Mohamed B. himself explained that in the 32 years he has been in Catalonia he had never used social networks because his work did not leave him free time for that purpose. However, in recent years he "came the idea of ​​​​entering" different Facebook groups to "spend time until" he fell asleep.

The second convict, Francisco C., has also acknowledged the facts that were attributed to him in the indictment of the Public Ministry and has settled for one year in prison, a reduction compared to the three and a half years in prison originally requested by a crime of terrorist self-indoctrination.

The investigation had its starting point in 2018 when the National Police detected a group called "The Caliphate will remain" in the Telegram messaging application. The General Information Police Station discovered that it was focused on the dissemination of propaganda in Spanish about the terrorist organization DAESH.

In said Telegram group, the Police agents realized that one of the users, with a Cuban passport, was planning, according to the tax document, to attack a cafeteria in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, whose clientele included the staff of the Embassy of the United States in the South American country.

The Police notified both Colombia and the United States and, in a three-way operation, this person was arrested in Bogotá. From then on, the Colombian Attorney General's Office informed Spain of the existence of a cell linked to DAESH that would be coordinated to carry out attacks on Spanish soil.

The analysis of the effects seized from the detainee in Colombia revealed that he had requested collaboration via Telegram for his plans and that he had contacts with Mohamed B and Francisco C., with whom he would have messaged for the first time on February 19, 2018, when Francisco C He told her "spontaneously" that he lived in Spain.

A year later, on April 30, 2019, the Central Court of Instruction Number 6 of the National Court gave its authorization for a police officer, operating undercover, to register on Telegram to talk to Francisco C. and discovered that he was subscribed to a group, with a name in Arabic and more than 4,000 members, dedicated to the sale of weapons and military equipment, as well as telephones, cars, motorcycles, furniture, computers or tablets.

Days later, on May 9, the undercover police officer began a conversation with the accused "about Islam in general and initially inconsequential issues." In the exchange of messages, Francisco C. claimed "to be a convert" to the Muslim creed for "a year" and said that he preferred not to have a Salafist aesthetic "in order to go unnoticed among his acquaintances", describes the Prosecutor's Office.

During the conversations, the undercover agent asked him if he had ever thought of taking action, to which Francisco C. replied that he wanted to "do away with Catholics and Jews" and "openly" invited an attack against a headquarters of the LGTBI collective in Las Palmas, for which he requested "material help".

The investigations led to the entry and search of the defendant's home, where the Police seized his mobile phone, in which a series of audios and images were found about DAESH executions, oaths of loyalty to the terrorist organization or about weapons, material of war or accessories of the "virtual jihad". Everything revolved around a "radical vision" of the Islamic religion.

For his part, Mohamed B. was located in 2019 and later arrested as a result, also, of the infiltration of a police officer into the networks. Once his mobile phone was searched, it was discovered that he regularly consumed "a lot of indoctrinating material" available on a website with jihadist overtones that the accused later spread "massively" through his profiles on Facebook and WhatsApp.

He did so, according to the letter from the Public Ministry, "after having filtered, selected and translated into Spanish the fragments that he considers suitable within the balance between radical material to indoctrinate in jihad and comply with the security measures that avoid detection."

In addition, the Prosecutor's Office considered "verified" that Mohamed B., as a follower of the 'takfiri' ideology, "the most radical branch of jihadism", made "repeated calls" from social networks and in private groups to join DAESH and the jihad, "even going so far as to justify executions and terrorist attacks".

Among Mohamed B.'s publications, the prosecutor's writ included some such as: "The punishment for leaving Islam is death"; "The ties of Islam and the bases are three (...): Whoever abandons one of them becomes a 'kaffir' and his blood is allowed", or: "The terrorist is the fighter for the freedom of another man".