The Spanish 'librarian' of ISIS, who fled after being provisionally released, is detained in Norway

The Norwegian police have arrested in Oslo, with information provided by the Civil Guard, an alleged 46-year-old Spanish jihadist who, after being arrested in Asturias in August as the alleged creator of a virtual library with more than 4,000 multimedia files from the Islamic State (ISIS in its acronym in English), had fled after being provisionally released by order of the National Court. The arrest occurred on January 16 and, since then, the alleged terrorist has tried to prevent her surrender to the Spanish authorities with the argument that she has resided in Norway since 2014 and is in the process of obtaining the nationality of this Scandinavian country. An Oslo court has rejected her allegations and authorized her upcoming delivery to Spain.

The operation that allowed the alleged jihadist to be arrested for the first time last summer began after agents of the Civil Guard Information Service detected the presence on social networks of profiles in which Islamic State propaganda was disseminated with multiple references to Al Andalus, which led to the suspicion that a person with Spanish nationality was behind them. The investigations corroborated the evidence and led to Norway, where the suspect had lived for 10 years with her family.

The now arrested woman maintained “profuse activity” from her home in the Scandinavian country on different internet platforms and social networks “in favor of the jihadist cause,” which had led her to create a publicly accessible jihadist digital library of more than 4,000 multimedia files (more than 80 gigabytes) prepared by the ISIS propaganda apparatus, as detailed by the armed institute in a note released this Friday. This is what is known in police jargon as core disseminators (main disseminators), radicalized people without any direct relationship with the terrorist organization who act as a “sounding board” for the abundant material that ISIS created during its caliphate in Syria and that is still available on the internet.

The investigations also revealed that the woman, within her growing radicalization, had supposedly already taken the oath of loyalty to the Islamic State, which implies her willingness to participate more actively in jihadist activities, according to sources close to the investigation. In fact, the agents discovered that she intended to travel to territory controlled by the terrorist organization in Syria. To do this, she had contacted an individual in Tunisia with whom she intended to travel from there. On her way to the North African country, the woman stopped in Asturias, where her family resides, and there she was detained at the end of August, after the Civil Guard confirmed that she had made a flight reservation to Tunisia.

After testifying in the National Court accused of several terrorism crimes, the judge ordered her release with precautionary measures, including the prohibition of leaving Spain, the withdrawal of her passport and the obligation to appear weekly in court. However, in November the woman stopped complying with this last measure and trace of her was lost. Shortly after, she was located in Norway, where she had fled, taking advantage of the fact that this country is part of the Schengen area, the European free movement zone of which 27 States are part, so she did not need a passport to fly there.

Once located with the collaboration of the Politiets Sikkerhetstjeneste (PST, the Norwegian police service), the National Court issued a European Arrest and Surrender Order (OEDE) for terrorism crimes against her, which led to her arrest on January 16. . Since then, according to the Norwegian press, she has tried to avoid her extradition to Spain with the argument that the accusations are false.

This arrest confirms the growing role of women in the jihadist phenomenon. In fact, neither the Islamic State nor Al Qaeda, the two organizations with the most followers in Spain, prohibit women from participating in terrorist acts, although in their writings they show their preference for them to dedicate themselves to supporting their partners as wives if they are militants of these groups and, above all, to care for and indoctrinate their children as future jihadists. ISIS magazines have been pointing in this direction for some time, limiting the role of women to a jihad without fighting or solidarity at home, supporting the radical organization with words and not deeds, and being mothers as many times as they can.

This woman is the eighth person arrested by security forces for alleged jihadist activities so far this year, although the first was outside Spain. In 2023 there were 77 detainees for their alleged links to religious radicalism, one of the highest figures in recent years, only surpassed by that of 2004, when the 11-M attacks were committed and 131 alleged jihadists were arrested; and that of 2005, when there were 92 arrested.