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Barcelona - 16 January 2019 2.00 h

Seventeen arrested in anti-terror op

Five of those arrested were in an “advanced process of radicalisation” and planning to launch an attack

- Barcelona

The ter­ror sus­pects ar­rested by the Cata­lan po­lice yes­ter­day were very rad­i­calised and aim­ing to launch a ter­ror­ist at­tack, but did not have the ca­pac­ity to do so and there was there­fore not yet any risk to the pub­lic. That was the mes­sage is­sued by Cata­lan In­te­rior Min­is­ter Miquel Buch yes­ter­day re­gard­ing five of the sev­en­teen men ar­rested in Barcelona and Igual­ada as part of an anti-Ji­hadist op­er­a­tion. They are being charged with the crimes of ter­ror­ism against prop­erty and pub­lic health, crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion and fal­si­fy­ing doc­u­ments.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion that began in May 2017 with a cit­i­zen re­port­ing Ji­hadist ac­tiv­ity to the po­lice cul­mi­nated in an op­er­a­tion car­ried out at six a.m. yes­ter­day by means of six po­lice raids. The po­lice say they have dis­man­tled a cell of five Barcelona res­i­dents aged be­tween 33 and 44 who were in an “ad­vanced state of rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion with the con­vic­tion and in­tent to launch an at­tack”.

The group fol­lowed the prin­ci­ples of the Ji­hadist move­ment and had an “im­por­tant” num­ber of pub­li­ca­tions with the pos­tu­lates of the Is­lamic State. Sur­veil­lance by the Gen­eral Min­istry of In­for­ma­tion ver­i­fied that those under in­ves­ti­ga­tion formed part of a wider crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion, which had com­mit­ted at least 369 thefts and rob­beries in the cen­tre of the Cata­lan cap­i­tal as a means of sub­sis­tence and fi­nanc­ing their ac­tiv­i­ties. There­fore, in ad­di­tion to those ar­rested for ter­ror­ism, 12 more peo­ple have been ar­rested for be­long­ing to a crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion and crimes against prop­erty; one for pub­lic health and one for fal­si­fy­ing doc­u­ments.

Of the five that had been rad­i­calised, three are from Al­ge­ria, one from Libya and one from Iraq. The raids took place in Clot, La Rib­era and Nou Bar­ris.

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