Terrorist group inspired by radical Islam in Pakistan is captured in Barcelona

BarcelonaTehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan translates as “I am here, Pakistan!”. It is the motto of an Islamist movement that was born in 2015 among those who demanded the release of a bodyguard who murdered the governor of Punjab, in the north of the country, for criticizing Pakistan’s blasphemy law. The fines of this law, created to maintain the sanctity of Islam in the country, go as far as the death penalty. This movement became a political party, the TLP, which in the last elections won three million votes, without ever having representation. It all seems very far away, but from these acronyms has emerged a radical, violent and terrorist ideology that kills blasphemers and that has reached our home.

The Mossos d'Esquadra, in a joint operation with the National Police and the Italian Polizi di Stato, have dismantled a terrorist organisation that not only extolled a radical Islamist ideology, but had also carried out actions to select possible targets for attacks. The operation ended with eleven arrests, ten in the early hours of Monday in the city of Barcelona and its metropolitan area, and one in Piacenza, in northern Italy. According to sources of the investigation consulted by the ARA, these terrorists must disassociate themselves from the jihadist and Salafist ideology, conveyed above all through the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

According to sources from the Mossos, the jihadist ideology seeks to implement a world caliphate (system of government of Islam), and to do so through violence. The eleven detainees do not respond to this ideology: their main objective is to preserve the sacredness of Islam and respond to any offence with violence. They are framed, according to the same sources of the investigation, in beliefs close to the TLP. And the way of attacking also changes: if the jihadists could look for emblematic buildings to attack, this radical Pakistani ideology focuses on specific targets, normally people who have committed, in its opinion, an act of blasphemy. It would fall within these parameters. The decapitation of Professor Samuel Paty in October 2020 in France. To top it off, there is also a territorial difference: if the main jihadist organisations draw on several countries in the Middle East, this ideology draws above all on Pakistan.

Background

It is not news that the radical ideology of the TLP has reached there, since the operation made public this Friday is the third phase of an investigation by the National Police that has been going on since 2022, with around twenty arrests since then. In this last case, the group was organized and hierarchical, to such an extent that they made periodic contributions of money to finance the network. Through messaging networks, some encrypted, the organization expanded its doctrine and praised terrorist acts (such as decapitations) against people who had criticized the model of Islam, in Europe and Pakistan. To the point that they had already identified some targets in Europe. Sources of the investigation point out that this ideology is not so much in favor of claiming responsibility for the attacks, but that "the important thing is the punishment." "They structure themselves and adopt a vigilant attitude to detect people, in some cases journalists and academics, who may have committed blasphemy," say the same sources.

This vigilant attitude was encouraged in a messaging group led by one of the detainees and which was made up entirely of women. Mossos sources warn that this in no way means that women had an important role in the organisation, but rather that they had a secondary role, as required by Islamic law. However, in this group of women not only indoctrination was promoted, but also possible targets who had criticised Islam were sought.

Investigators from the Mossos d'Esquadra of the General Information Commissioner's Office, as well as from the General Information Commissioner's Office and the Barcelona Provincial Information Brigade of the National Police were involved in the operation. Nearly 150 Mossos officers participated, as well as from the Special Intervention Group (GEI). The investigation was led by the central court of instruction number 6 and coordinated by the General Prosecutor's Office of the National Court. On Thursday, the detainees were brought before the court, which ordered provisional imprisonment for four of them.