The FBI warned that the terrorist, who entered prison this Friday, was also looking for components to manufacture ‘Mother of Satan’, the powerful explosive that the cell of the attacks in Catalonia was trying to manufacture.
Members of the General Information Police Station of the National Police and the Information Headquarters of the Civil Guard detained an alleged jihadist last Wednesday in the Santa Eugènia neighborhood of Girona who, among other attacks, attempted a massive machine-gunning of tourists in the beaches of Benidorm. The head of the Investigating Court number 2 of the National Court, Ismael Moreno, ordered this Friday the reported entry into prison and without bail of Fath Allah Benhachem Gharrass, 28, of Moroccan origin and Spanish nationality, from whom they were not seized weapons.
The arrest of Benhachem, which became known this Friday afternoon, was made possible thanks to the warning from the US FBI, which was the one that warned the Spanish security forces of his high degree of radicalism and the proselytism he carried out in favor of the Daesh on social networks, on the internet and also on the Deep Web, the deep network used by criminals and delinquents and which is out of the reach of the majority of those who browse online.
Precisely, the intention of the jihadist, who was captured two hours before the attacks in Algeciras in which another young Moroccan assassinated the sacristan Diego Valencia, was to hang the machine gunning of the bathers on these networks of the Islamic State after recording the attack in Benidorm, one of the emblematic locations for the LGTBI movement.
The truth is that the jihadist had already carried out target practice. At his home on Montseny street, in Girona, a cardboard silhouette of those used in galleries with seven impacts was found. In addition, six pods of two different calibers were found: 9 millimeters and 38 Special.
I was looking for an AK-47
The FBI’s monitoring of the different aliases he used online, such as ‘Daniel Lofti’ or ‘Pipa4545’, was what revealed his plans to attack the well-known Alicante tourist town on behalf of Daesh. The monitoring of his online conversations and also the subsequent wiretaps -especially difficult due to the extreme security measures he adopted- revealed that he had already begun negotiations with another radical, alias ‘Karim el Maghrebi’ and that he probably find outside of Spain, to acquire AK-47 rifles, 9-millimeter pistols of the Glock brand and belts for explosives. The efforts in the black market, explain sources of the fight against terrorism, were advanced, although for the moment the jihadist had not obtained any firearms.
The other great fixation of the terrorist was to attack Moroccan citizens in Spain, whom he criticized for their westernization, although the specific plans have not yet been discovered. He also spoke in the networks in which supporters of the Islamic State move about trying to kill a Jew residing in Spain or Moroccan authorities in national territory.
As reported by Interior this Friday, the arrested man also frequently watched the execution of jihadist attacks in Europe. The same day he was arrested, he searched for how to carry out stabbings and attacks carried out with this type of bladed weapons, as revealed by the department headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska. He up to 18 times he reviewed the real video of a stabbing of a person on a train to, supposedly, learn the technique. This supposed ‘lone wolf’ was also educated with videos of stabbings in US prisons or jihadist stabbing attacks in London or Tunis.
Poisons and car bombs
The arrested man also used his extensive knowledge of the Internet to obtain manuals with which to train himself in the use of weapons and explosives, although in the search of his home on Wednesday no substances were found that could be used to manufacture bombs. His most insistent queries were about how to manufacture TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), better known as the ‘Mother of Satan’, the explosive that the cell of the attacks on Las Ramblas and Cambrils in August 2017 tried to manufacture and that made blow up the house of Alcanar, where two of the terrorists died. Benhachem Gharrass was already trying to buy large quantities of acetone, the main component of TATP, from a Chinese supplier.
In the same way, he had carried out research to manufacture C4, a powerful plastic explosive for military use, on how to make car bombs or on how to prepare various types of poisons.
The Ministry of the Interior valued this Friday the ‘tip’ of the FBI, since that notice had an “essential role for the identification and neutralization of this alleged terrorist.”
The anti-terrorist services insisted that the detainee “was in an advanced process of jihadist radicalization and had a profile of great violence and aggressiveness.” In fact, the ministry itself stressed that “during the practice of the different proceedings, the detainee has shown his distrust and arrogant rejection of the participating agents.”
The Police and the Civil Guard are now striving to reconstruct the steps of this terrorist in Spain and his possible contacts in the country. The only thing that is known for sure is that he lived in recent years in the Turkish city of Nigde, 300 kilometers from the border with Syria and once an obligatory passage for the ‘mujahideen’ who joined the ranks of the now-defunct ‘ Caliphate’.
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