Spanish police arrest 7 suspected jihadists

Spanish police arrest 7 suspected jihadists

PanARMENIAN.Net - Spanish police have arrested seven people with suspected links to so-called Islamic State (IS) and other jihadist groups, officials said, according to BBC News.

The suspects were held in raids in the cities of Valencia and Alicante and in Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta. They provided logistical support for terrorist activities in Iraq and Syria, police said.

They said the alleged leader of the cell was also asked by IS to supply women for militants in the two countries.

Four of those arrested are Spanish nationals of Jordanian, Moroccan and Syrian origin. Another two are Syrian and Moroccan citizens. The authorities did not provide details about the seventh suspect.

The investigation - which is still ongoing - was launched in 2014 into what police describe as "foreign structures" of IS on Spanish soil.

Meanwhile, a second member of a British group of Islamic State militants dubbed "the Beatles" has been identified as 32-year-old Londoner Alexanda Kotey, according to Reuters.

The group, whose leader Mohammed Emwazi gained notoriety for appearing in videos showing the murders of Western hostages, are said by former hostages of Islamic State to have been assigned to guard foreign prisoners, and were nicknamed "the Beatles" due to their English accents.

Londoner Emwazi, referred to by British media as "Jihadi John", is believed to have been killed in a U.S. drone strike last year.

The reports said Kotey was a soccer fan who had grown up in West London and converted to Islam in his early 20s, after meeting a Muslim woman with whom he had two children. He had attended the same mosque as Emwazi.

Kotey has a Greek Cypriot mother and Ghanaian father, and left Britain in 2009 to travel to Gaza as part of an aid convoy. A U.S. intelligence official had confirmed that Kotey had traveled to Syria.

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