Islamist radicals in Spain are starting to threaten the police directly.
According to a report from the Catalan regional police force, seen by the Spanish news site El Debate, officers monitoring radicalization online have found social media messages instructing their recipients to attack the police.
“Police officers can be one of the main objectives if a terrorist attack materializes,” indicates a report from the Mossos d’Esquadra’s Anti-Terrorist Coordination Cabinet.
The police force detected 189 cases of possible violent radicalization in 2023, with 62% linked to jihad. Among those messages, the agents who monitor the network to search for cases of radicalization have detected several focused on the Mossos themselves. The document cites one case from October 30th, in which the Central Radicalism Research Unit (UCIRAX) detected on social media a threatening message against police officers which included instructions on how to conduct an attack.
This message offers several options including targeting police stations and their surroundings where agents will likely be unprepared for such aggression. The message suggested other tactics, from causing a forest fire and then ambushing officers when they drive there, to shooting agents with AK-47 rifles—capable of piercing the bulletproof vests used by the Mossos—or attacking the police officers inside their vehicles.
As it states, “One of the highlights of the assessment of the terrorist threat with a jihadist matrix was related to the relevance of reminding all members of the Forces and Corps of the importance of compliance with self-protection measures.”
Catalonia has been at a level 4 alert for terrorism since the devastating lone wolf attack in 2017 in which a terrorist drove a truck through a crowd in the heart of Barcelona.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/jihadis-target-spanish-police/