The Guardia Civil has located and freed an underage Spanish girl who disappeared earlier this month from the home of a 34-year-old jihadist in the town of Verviers (Belgium, population 55,000) who had captured her, indoctrinated her with terrorist material and allegedly wanted to send her to a conflict zone, according to a statement released this morning by the armed unit, which did not give details of the minor’s regular whereabouts or age. The man was arrested.
The young woman had left her parents’ home for Belgium on July 2, “accompanied by persons belonging to a suspected terrorist recruitment organisation based in that country”, according to the investigation by the Guardia Civil’s information service in the fight against jihadist radicalisation. The family knew nothing about the child’s fate.
The travel allegedly culminated in a first phase of indoctrination, during which the man with Belgian nationality had “constantly” sent propaganda material of a terrorist type to the minor in order to radicalise her.
After the escape ended, the Guardia Civil, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Central Juvenile Court of the National Court tried to locate the minor “before the possibility of her being involved in a terrorist plot”, the statement said. The investigators of the armed unit, in collaboration with the Belgian Federal Police, managed to find out where the young woman was staying.
On July 15, the man was arrested in the Belgian city of Verviers and immediately managed to secure the release of the Spanish minor, for whom a European and international arrest warrant had been issued by the Central Juvenile Court of the National Court.
Preventing the recruitment of minors to jihadism and preventing them from being sent to conflict zones has been one of the key tasks of counter-terrorism services in recent years. In fact, they are still in refugee camps, mainly in Syria, dispersed and waiting for the repatriation of many women who were captured as minors by these networks and now also have children because they have joined the Islamist radicals.
France, for example, repatriated 35 French minors and 16 women earlier this month from camps in north-eastern Syria where members of jihadists linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group are being held. Since 2016, Paris had repatriated only 126 minors, according to the Collectif des Familles Unies. According to its estimates, 97 European women and children had been repatriated by 2021. Only seven of them were French, all minors. From January 1 to July 4, other European countries repatriated 65 children and 27 women, none of whom were French. El Pais
