(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Four women including a minor and three men were arrested in Barcelona Spains North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta and in the Moroccan town of Fnideq.
Seven people were arrested in Spain and Morocco on Tuesday for allegedly recruiting young women via the Internet to join the ISIS group fighting in Iraq and Syria.
Spain’s interior ministry said four women one of them a minor and three men were arrested in Barcelona Spain’s North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta and in the nearby Moroccan town of Fnideq or Castillejos in Spanish.
“All of the arrested are accused of forming part of a network that recruited and sent women to the Syria-Iraq front to the terrorist organisation Daesh” a statement said.
The operation was carried out in cooperation with Moroccan security forces.
The group used social media sites such as Facebook to recruit the women offering a “completely false and idealised vision” of their future lives in “what they call the Caliphate of the ISIS” the statement added.
The group had so far managed to recruit 12 women mainly from Ceuta and Melilla targeting young women with poor job prospects who used social networking sites without much supervision.
The two men detained in Fnideq just across the border from Ceuta were the leaders of the network Morocco’s interior ministry said in a separate statement.
They were in contact with “Moroccan combatants in the heart of ISIS who were planning attacks” in Morocco it added.
Moroccan authorities believe more than 2000 nationals including some with dual nationality are now fighting in Syria and Iraq with the ISIS group.
In September the government approved a draft law to tighten anti-terrorist legislation aimed particularly at stopping people from joining militant groups.
About 100 Spaniards have joined “militias” in Syria and Iraq Spain’s ambassador to Iraq Jose Maria Ferre de la Pena said last month.
Governments in Europe and elsewhere fear that battle-hardened Islamist fighters returning under the influence of groups inspired by Al Qaeda may pose the threat of attacks.
Spain this year marked the 10th anniversary of the March 11 2004 Al Qaeda-inspired bombing of four packed commuter trains in Madrid which killed 191 people.
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