A Spanish judge has ordered a Syrian minor be remanded in custody for six months on charges of belonging to a terror group and possessing explosives after his arrest over attack fears.
Court documents, dated January 23 and seen by AFP on Thursday, showed he was arrested on Sunday night in Montellano near the southern city of Seville following a surveillance operation lasting more than two months.
Montellano’s mayor Curro Gil told the Diario de Sevilla daily the family arrived from Syria as refugees several years ago and had integrated peacefully into the town, which lies about 60 kilometres (35 miles) southeast of Seville.
Court documents show police were alerted by a phonecall on November 15 saying he “had got hold of several substances to make explosives, notably glycerine, nitric acid and another substance which could be sulphuric acid or sulphur”.
He had “publicly declared allegiance to the Islamic State (group) and said he was on the same mission.. and there were fears he could carry out an attack”.
Court documents also showed he was “highly radicalised, obsessed with all things military, had camouflage clothing and was extremely homophobic and antisemitic”.
On November 13, he showed several youngsters a video of a militant who blew himself up in an attack and told them he’d “made a detonator that could be remotely activated by mobile phone”.
At his home, police found “part of a bomb containing shrapnel which was ready for use and only lacking the explosive to detonate it”, handwritten notes on how to make the explosive TATP and a quantity of the substance itself along with bottles of acetone, oxygenated water and sulphuric acid.
They also found a large machete, a tactical military vest and a framed picture of an IS flag.
Both his phone and Facebook account showed multiple signs of his growing radicalisation, with chemistry-related searches and posts with IS material such as tutorials on how to make explosives.
In ordering he be held in pre-trial detention, the judge said the charges against him were “very serious” and that he was “a clear flight risk”.
His mother, a seamstress, was briefly detained but released on Wednesday, local media said.
On Monday, many local teenagers did not go to school with some telling the Diario de Sevilla they had received a message from the suspect on Sunday saying they shouldn’t go, in which he allegedly wrote: “Tomorrow will be a big day”.
