Moroccan Father Defends Son Arrested in Spain on Terror Charges

"A month ago, I had the favorable report for family reunification in Murcia, I was happy because I was going to reunite my whole family, but when Mohammed was arrested, I went crazy," says Belkacem, Mohammed’s father, in an interview given to El Español from Morocco. Father of five children to whom he regularly sent money to Oujda in Morocco, Belkacem, 58, has been residing in Spain for 30 years. "Spain is my second country," he emphasizes. His third son, Mohammed, arrested for jihadist terrorism, has compromised the family reunification planned for the end of November.

Mohammed was ready to die a martyr for jihad, according to the police. His father finds it hard to believe. "I don’t know if he was trapped, I don’t know what happened to my son. At his age, he has no experience or vision of life: anyone can deceive him," he argued, defending his son’s innocence. The Directorate General of Territorial Surveillance (DGST) of Morocco alerted the National Police in February to the presence of a "highly radicalized" individual in Spain. Investigators began to follow Mohammed, 21, holder of a residence permit and who had been living with his father in Blanca (Murcia) since 2020.

Agents have followed Mohammed’s activity on the Internet and social media in recent months. The young man "has no friends" and "was not very sociable," confides a Moroccan family living next door to the apartment where he was staying with his father. "Mohammed was a solitary and very religious person, he never missed the Friday prayer at the mosque... We didn’t see him going out to party like other young people. His routine was limited to working in the fields, shopping, praying, walking in the garden, or at most going out with his brother, Nasriddin, 18, who arrived in Blanca at the end of 2021," says the Moroccan family.

At the end of July, Belkacem, Mohammed and Nasriddin went on vacation to Morocco. Only the two brothers returned to Blanca, their father having stayed to finalize the family reunification procedures. During this period, Mohammed "read and shared extremely radical content and possessed a huge amount of jihadist propaganda material," the investigators found, adding that the young man "openly expressed his desire to become a martyr." "My son is serious and very shy, I don’t know what happened," laments Belkacem.

The Madrid investigating court ordered the detention of Mohammed on Friday for his alleged participation in a terrorist organization and self-radicalization. "I don’t know in which prison my son is, I want to hear his voice, otherwise I will die," complains Belkacem.