Woman recruiting for ISIS arrested in Spain with Turkish help
BARCELONA, Spain – A Moroccan woman was arrested in Barcelona on suspicion of running a major recruitment ring for the Islamic State (ISIS), Spanish authorities announced, saying Turkey had helped in the case.
Samira Yerou, a resident of Spain who was under an international arrest warrant related to an anti-terrorist Spanish law, was arrested Saturday at Barcelona’s El Prat airport, the Spanish Interior Ministry said in a statement.
It said she was suspected of playing a major role in recruiting women in Europe and Morocco for ISIS, or Daesh in Arabic.
“The arrested woman could have been playing an important role in attracting and radicalizing in favor of the terrorist organization Daesh,” the ministry statement said.
It said her role was “particularly important in recruiting and sending female sympathizers of the terrorist group in Europe and Morocco" to Syria and Iraq.
Her arrest took place in collaboration with Turkish authorities, the ministry added.
It said Yerou had been intercepted in Turkey while trying to cross into Syria with her three-year-old son to join ISS.
The woman had left the Spanish town of Rubi last December with her son, who is a Spanish citizen, and her husband had reported the disappearance to police.
This is not the first time Spain arrests women linked to ISIS.
Last month, Spanish authorities arrested four people on charges of recruiting women to join ISIS and training people to join the jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
In December authorities arrested four women, one of them a minor, on charges of links to ISIS. Last August two Spanish teenagers of Moroccan origin were arrested while trying to join other women to travel from the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla to Syria.
The increasing trend of women joining ISIS gained greater media attention after three missing Muslim girls from Britain – two aged 15 and the third a year older – were believed to have crossed into Syria from Turkey.
Experts say that women who join ISIS do so mainly to marry fighters and bear their children.
Spain has joined other European nations in the fight to stop citizens from travelling to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS.
Spanish authorities, who have arrested dozens of suspected jihadists, have said that some 80 Spanish citizens have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join jihadist groups.
Rudaw
