The suspected perpetrator of the deadly attack Wednesday night in Algeciras, a 25-year-old Moroccan, had been waiting to be deported since June and was not known to Spanish security services, the government said on Thursday.
A sacristan was killed and a priest seriously injured in this machete attack on two churches, located a few hundred meters from each other, in this southern Spanish port city off the Moroccan coast.
“An expulsion procedure for irregular situation had been opened in June” against the suspect, but “since it is an administrative procedure (…), its execution is not immediate,” the Spanish Ministry of the Interior stressed in a message to the press.
He had no “criminal or terrorist record in Spain or in allied countries” and was not monitored by the Spanish services “neither in the last days nor before,” the ministry continues.
An investigation for “alleged acts of terrorism”
A security source confirmed that he was not booked for radicalism in Spain or France. According to various media, this young Moroccan, arrested immediately after the attack, lived very close to the attacked churches. The government has so far not qualified the nature of the attack. For its part, the Prosecutor’s Office announced on Wednesday night the opening of an investigation for “alleged acts of terrorism” that was entrusted to the National Court of Madrid, in charge of the most sensitive cases, particularly terrorism files.
“We are investigating. Today a raid was carried out on the home of the alleged perpetrator (…) and its result could obviously determine the nature of the facts, terrorist character or any other”, stressed the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande. -Marlaska from Stockholm, where he was attending a meeting with his European counterparts.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, this young Moroccan -a photo taken after his arrest shows a bushy and smiling beard- entered after 7:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT) “into the church of San Isidro de Algeciras and attacked the priest, armed with a machete, seriously injuring him.”
“Then he went to the church of Nuestra Señora de La Palma, where he attacked the sacristan, after causing several damages.” The sacristan, Diego Valencia, then “managed to leave the church, but was caught outside by the assailant, who inflicted several fatal injuries on him,” the ministry continued. The priest, Antonio Rodríguez, was wounded “in the neck” and hospitalized, while the sacristan died in the street, according to a spokeswoman for the emergency services.
A day of mourning in Algeciras
The mayor of Algeciras declared a day of mourning and invited residents to gather to condemn the attack on Thursday at 12:00 (11:00 GMT) in front of the church near which the sacristan was murdered. In this city of 120,000 inhabitants, astonishment prevailed.
“It is a moment of pain,” Juan José Marina, a priest at the church of Nuestra Señora de la Palma, where the murdered sacristan officiated, told Spanish public radio. “It’s not something we feared, because relations with the Muslim community are good in Algeciras, we don’t have any problems,” he said.
“We are destroyed (…) This person does not represent Islam and Muslim values,” Dris Mohamed Amar, spokesman for the Union of Muslims of “Campo de Gibraltar”, a territory of which Algeciras is a part, said on public radio.
Pedro Sánchez sends his “condolences” to the relatives of the sacristan
Condemning an “unjustifiable” attack, the general secretary of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, César García Pagán, warned the Madrid press of the “danger of demonizing communities.”
For his part, the head of the Spanish Government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, “expressed” his “deepest condolences to the relatives of the sacristan who died in the terrible attack in Algeciras”, while the leader of the Popular Party, the main opposition formation from the right, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said he was “horrified”.
The latest attacks carried out in Spain date back to August 2017, when two attacks by a jihadist cell left 16 dead and 140 injured on Avenida des Ramblas in Barcelona and in the coastal town of Cambrils. They had been claimed by the Islamic State organization.
Spain was hit on March 11, 2004 by the bloodiest jihadist attack in Europe, when devices exploded aboard four suburban trains at Madrid’s Atocha station, killing 191 people and injuring some 2,000.
Source: BFM TV
