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Rabat – Spain’s National Court has confirmed the decision of the Secretary of State for Security to expel a woman of Moroccan origin from Spain’s territory, banning her from entering the country for 10 years for her involvement with a jihadist cell, local media reported.
Born in Morocco in 1996, the woman became a legal resident in Spain in 1999. She was first arrested on April 2015 during the dismantling of a jihadist cell that operated in Barcelona and sent jihadists to Syria and Iraq, but was not convicted by the court, Spanish news outlet El Confidencial reported.
Spanish police indicated that the young woman was “charged with covering up the terrorist activity” carried out by her partner and by another member of the cell who was also arrested by the Bulgarian police on December 15, 2014 while en route to Syria, El Confidencial added.
She married a man of Moroccan origin in 2018, but anti-terrorist police officers pointed out that she “shared experiences with another person who was already radicalized, specifically her [Moroccan] brother-in-law.”
Her brother-in-law “traveled to Syria on 2014 to join the terrorist group Daesh and subsequently carried out a suicide attack in which he died,” the same police officers added.
However, the General Information Commissioner, the unit of the National Police dedicated to detecting and monitoring terrorist activities, denounced the Morocco-born woman in 2019, according to the Spanish media.
Following the police complaint, the Secretary of State for Security opened an administrative process of expulsion from the national territory. It concluded on October 15, 2019, with a resolution that decreed the woman’s expulsion from the Spanish territory and prohibited her from entering the country for ten years.
In its report about the case, El Confidencial noted that the young woman consumed many Daesh propaganda products, music, videos, and books with jihadist content.
In France, she was classified as a “person belonging to a terrorist group located in Catalonia likely to move around Europe and/or French territory,” and was banned from entering the country until 2055.
The French authorities have also proposed blocking her finances to avoid possible financial support for the jihadist movement.
In 2019, the woman filed an appeal before Spain’s national high court, in which she requested the cancellation of her expulsion from the country. But the appeal was rejected.
According to her defense, she was at the time of the facts “ a minor who was radicalized by her partner, as well as by her brother-in-law, both taking advantage of her particular situation of vulnerability.”
Commenting on the expulsion ruling, Spain’s Ministry of the Interior noted that the verdict was “duly justified, respecting the principle of proportionality, and other legal guarantees.”
The judges of the Spanish National Court accepted the arguments of the Interior and the Spanish Police, stressing that “it can only be considered that she represents a real and sufficiently serious threat to national security,” the ministry added.
Meanwhile, the judges rejected the defendant’s arguments that being married and pregnant were valid reasons not to be expelled from Spain.
