Nine years in prison are being sought in Spain for a jihadist recruiter who described himself as a “soldier of the caliphate”

An alleged jihadist, accused of recruitment and of spreading terrorist content since 2013 on Facebook, where he called himself a “soldier of the caliphate,” faces a request from the prosecutor for nine years in prison for the crime of indoctrination in the National Court of Madrid on Monday.

The accused, AB, of Moroccan origin and with a permanent residence permit since 2007, has been in pre-trial detention since January 2022 for these events.

In its provisional qualification, the Prosecutor's Office also gives the option that, on a subsidiary basis, he be sentenced to seven years in prison for a crime of self-indoctrination (4 years) and another of glorification of terrorism (3 years).

According to the prosecutor's provisional conclusions, the accused, "as a result of a deep and latent process of radicalization that began at least in 2013, has distanced himself from moderate currents of the Muslim community" including those of his local mosque.

He thus adopted "the most extreme postulates that defend a violent religiosity" and expressed "his adherence to the postulates of the fatwas", especially those of an Islamist Salafist cleric convicted for his membership in the terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusrah.

He devoted himself to spreading his ideology and even called himself a "soldier of the caliphate," the prosecutor stressed.

In 2013 - the document continues - he opened a public profile on Facebook with the intention of disclosing such content and in 2017 he created a new profile to which he applied greater security measures, restricting public access.

There are a total of 24 publications in which he regularly consumes and shares propaganda material inciting people to join the activities of the terrorist organization Daesh.

Since at least October 2019, without having any other daily activity, as he did not have a permanent job, he focused his life objective on his work as a "recruiter" under the so-called "incubator" principle, forming around himself a closed group of people similar to his radical ideology and establishing a structure of recruitment, indoctrination and recruitment in which he assumed a leadership role. EFE