The National Police arrested this Sunday afternoon in the Sevillian municipality of Montellano a young man born in 2007 and of Syrian nationality, as part of an operation against jihadism that is still open, as sources close to the investigation confirm to EL PAÍS . Explosive material was found in the house where the 16-year-old minor lived.
The sources in the investigation urge caution and dispute one of the versions circulating in the community that it was the young man's mother who alerted the authorities. “The operation is still open and there could be further arrests or consequences,” say those interviewed. Investigators are analyzing the material taken yesterday from the house where the prisoner lived with his mother and younger sister. The young man was transferred to Madrid and the investigation, carried out by agents from the General Information Commissariat under the National Police, was declared secret.
The city of 7,000 experienced moments of chaos Sunday afternoon as its neighbors saw the agents carrying out the operation, blocking several streets in the center. The nervousness forced the city council to issue a statement on social networks calling for calm and saying that the National Police had informed them that “there is no danger to the population”, although the investigation would continue “in the next few hours”. whereupon “a call for calm” was issued.
Sources from the consistory inform this newspaper that the community, located in the extreme south of the Sevillian countryside, woke up “completely normal” after the turbulent hours yesterday, since the police operation began on Sunday at around four in the afternoon.
The mayor of the municipality, Curro Gil, has confirmed that the detained young man lived with his mother and a little sister. They were a family of Syrian refugees who were perfectly integrated into the community where they had arrived about two years ago. This impression was also shared by the owner of a haberdashery store near the house where they lived, whose regular customer was the prisoner's mother, who had opened a sewing shop. “They had impeccable behavior. “We knew all three,” he said in a telephone conversation.
Classes at the institute where the minor attended were not interrupted and in fact the director informed families yesterday that the school day would proceed normally, the councilor stressed, although it is true that many children did not come today in the center.
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There are already several young people who have been exposed by state security forces and authorities in recent months for falling into jihadist networks. Six since November 2023, including this latest arrest in Montellano, they say Oscar Lopez-Fonseca. This month two teenagers were arrested in Palma de Mallorca and Plasencia (Cáceres) for broadcasting radical Islamist proclamations on video game channels frequented by teenagers. Last Monday, three more minors (two in the province of Madrid and another in Barcelona) were seized to produce triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a powerful homemade explosive known as “Mother of Satan.” Previously, in September last year, the Guardia Civil arrested a woman of Spanish nationality in Vitoria for indoctrinating her four children with the ideology of jihadist terrorism. However, in 2022, only a single minor was arrested for these crimes.
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