A former Guantanamo Bay detainee who once fought with militants in Afghanistan was arrested in Spain on Tuesday along with three other suspected members of a jihadi cell.
Three people were arrested in Ceuta, Spain’s Northern enclave city, according to statements from the nation’s interior ministry. Those three, plus another Moroccan arrested in the Moroccan border town of Farkhana, are suspected members of a jihadi cell that sought to recruit people to fight for the Islamic State.
The arrests came on the same day that President Obama rolled out his plan to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, and house the remaining detainees somewhere in the United States.
Though the former Guantanamo detainee was not named, Spanish authorities described him as “a leader who was trained in handling weapons, explosives and in military tactics.” According to Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz, he was captured in 2002 and held in the detention facility in Cuba before returning to Spain in 2004.
Another suspect was the brother of a fighter who blew himself up during an attack in Syria and who “was inclined to do the same thing,” Fernandez Diaz said.
According to the Spanish ministry, the suspects had set up contacts to try and acquire weapons and bomb-making materials and were aiming “to carry out terrorist acts in Spanish territory.” They were also working to recruit teenagers from Ceuta to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Spanish police arrested roughly 100 suspected Islamic extremists last year, the Associated Press reported.
