Madrid mosque was jihadi recruitment hub: court

Rasa - Madrid’s largest mosque was functioning as a Jihadist recruitment center led by a former Guantánamo prisoner, it has emerged.

News ID: 1812

Date: 13 December 2014 - 18:27

RNA - Lahcen Ikassrien, 47, a Moroccan national who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and released after nearly four years in Guantánamo, was using the cafeteria at the Mezquita de la M-30 (named after the adjacent ring road) to recruit and indoctrinate new combatants for the fronts in Iraq and Syria, according to a High Court investigation.

Ikassrien is one of several people who were arrested in June in a raid against an international network that recruited jihadists for the terrorist organization Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has links to Al Qaeda.

The group, known by its members as the Al-Andalus Brigade — a reference to the Islamic-controlled area of Spain of the Middle Ages — left a trail of evidence including paperwork, videos and social media content outlining how they operated.

One such example is that of Hicham Chentouf, who joined Isis in autumn of 2013. This young man started attending the M-30 mosque in 2010 and became radicalized after contact with the cell led by Ikassrien. He went on to become an imam at the Yunquera de Henares mosque in Spain's Guadalajara mosque.

In 2014, Chentouf posted on his Facebook page a message from the head of operations for Isis in Homs giving him permission to take a week's leave from combat. He had earlier posted a photo of himself brandishing an AK-47 rifle, Spain's El País newspaper reported.

Another member, Ismail Afalah, left his job and joined ISIS in Syria after spending a year with the ring members at the Madrid mosque. His parents thought he was away on vacation.

The ringleader, Lahcen Ikassrien, was acquitted by a Spanish court in 2006 after his release from Guantánamo and sued the state for damages, although his case did not prosper.

The new investigation shows that the ring had a country property near Ávila that was being used to train combatants. The judge describes Ikassrien as “the charismatic leader” of the Salafist group. A search of his Madrid home yielded a wealth of material relating to his recruitment and training activities. He now faces charges of terrorist association and forgery, as he was in possession of a fake residency permit.

R111/108/A/