Poster showing the appointment of Hassan K. by the TLP party in Spain’s National Police
Hassan K. hid a handwritten sheet of paper in his room in an apartment in Barcelona that could become the Rosetta Stone for the police. The paper held by this 19-year-old Pakistani man with a bushy beard contrasting with an almost invisible mustache and jet-black hair parted in two has led researchers to a lead: the existence in Spain of a formal structure of Tehreek-e- Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a legal party with parliamentary representation in the Asian country that advocates the beheading of those who blaspheme against Mohammed.
The document, written in Urdu, lists the names, phone numbers and positions of the 15 main people responsible for the TLP in Spain, according to research sources. In addition to a “supreme chief” (the only one who is not identified), there is a president (or “emir”) and a vice-president. But also, like the parties, “agents” are used for various matters: finance, politics, administration, security, legal advice, social affairs and even public relations. Hassan, who lives with his parents and siblings in an apartment in the Poblenou district of Barcelona, does not appear in the org chart. But aim high.
In April 2021, Hassan sent an election poster to a WhatsApp group announcing his appointment as “Communications Secretary of TLP Spain-Catalonia”. The poster features photos of some of the party’s self-proclaimed “martyrs” and of El Sheik Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a former government official who was expelled for his radical preaching and founded the TLP in 2015 to defend the validity of the controversial blasphemy law in Pakistan. The party’s goal is to ensure that crimes against Islam are “punished by the death penalty worldwide,” according to reports by the National Police Corps in the National High Court case against Hassan and four other youths, believed to be the same Promote postulates from Spain.
The intelligence services show concern about a group of “extreme danger” that is widely welcomed “among young Pakistanis residing in Europe”. After a process of “radicalization,” the reports warn, some of them were perpetrators of attacks in Pakistan and France. Most of these boys hail from Punjab, where the preacher Rizvi was born in Lahore, the capital, until his death from illness in 2020, when he was succeeded by his son Saad Hussain.
Hassan and the other investigators, residents of Catalonia and Andalusia, published on Tik Tok, Facebook and Instagram videos with fragments of the radical speeches of the Rizvi, who in 2018 brought thousands of people to the streets of Lahore to have them executed by Asia Bibi, the Christian who was sentenced to death for insulting Mohammed. The party glorifies perpetrators of attacks committed to avenge alleged crimes against the Prophet. Like Zaheer Hassan Mahmood, who stabbed two people to death outside the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris in September 2020 after the satirical magazine announced it would be republishing cartoons of Mohammed. Or Abdullah Abuyedovic Anzorov, who just a month later beheaded the French teacher Samuel Paty at the gates of the Bois d’Aulne school (northwest of Paris) for teaching the same cartoons in a course on freedom of expression.
A video about La Rambla
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The summary accessed by EL PAÍS shows that those examined also produced their own material. Touseeq H., 25, residing in Castelló d’Empúries (Girona), and Muhammad S., 24, residing in Úbeda (Jaén), together recorded a video that they posted on Tik Tok in which Muhammad was “having a Gesture makes his outstretched hand as a sign of the neck cut,” according to the police interpretation. The video was captured while walking along La Rambla in Barcelona, which was the scene of the 17-A jihadist attacks in 2017 that left 16 dead.
The most active in networks – he manages eight different profiles – is Hassan, who expresses his wish for certain penalties in force in Afghanistan (such as amputations) to reach Spain. Once he asked a compatriot living in France to get him photos of Emmanuel Macron’s home. “I don’t speak French, please check the information on Google and give it to me, I urgently want your location,” he writes. The petition seems a little naïve, but it shows the extent to which the French president is one of the black beasts of the anti-blasphemy party and a frequent target of the Rizvi.
To freedom
The five Pakistanis identified were arrested in February “because of the risk that they could carry out an action,” says the police, who, however, have not provided a single clue. Pre-emptive arrests are a common countermeasure against jihadist terrorism, sometimes leading to trials without solid evidence. Judge of the National Court Joaquín Elías Gadea ordered the detention of the five youths for three terrorist offenses, which were partially solved by the lawyer Benet Salellas, who arranged for their provisional release.
Salellas revealed the boys’ roots in their cities and, in a letter from the Pakistani embassy in Madrid, proved that the TLP is a “legal” party in the Asian country and “participates in electoral processes at the local level”. province and state.
Prosecutors have admitted that they are not on the EU or any other transnational organization’s list of terrorist organizations. According to the regional court, this circumstance “weakens” the evidence for the crime of recruitment for integration, the only one of the three crimes mentioned – together with glorification and dissemination to incite attacks – punishable by long prison sentences (from five to ten years). years) and could justify the risk of absconding.
There can be no recruitment if there is no terrorist organization. For the time being, the court sees signs of glorification, which can be punished with lower penalties (from one to three years in prison).
National Police
The embassy acknowledges that the TLP was temporarily suspended for “a short period” following the riots that sparked Asia Bibi’s release in October 2018. For several days, supporters of the radical movement lynched police officers, wreaked havoc and paralyzed activity across the country, particularly in Punjab.
The leader, Rizvi, encouraged the population to rise up against the army chief and assassinate the Supreme Court judges. He was arrested for terrorism and incitement to hatred, and two years later a hundred followers were sentenced to long prison terms.
The party’s ban on activity was enacted under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Law in April 2021, but lifted just seven months later with the TLP’s commitment “not to disrupt public life,” according to the embassy.
In the report sent to the judge, the police believe their explicit legalization was due to “pressure” from the group during those months of renewed rioting in Lahore, which left both dead and injured. The researchers have no doubt that TLP is comparable to groups like al Qaeda or the Islamic State because, like them, they manipulate “the religious feelings” of young people.
Although based in Spain, Hassan and the others under investigation closely followed the ups and downs of their country’s politics. When TLP was banned, the communications secretary took part in a small demonstration in Barcelona’s Plaza de España. Defense sources indicate that despite the fact that their everyday life took place in Barcelona, Castelló d’Empúries, Úbeda or Granada, the boys were still mentally anchored in the social, cultural and political reality of Pakistan.
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