Spain Detains Moroccan Mother Who Wanted to Send Twins to Syria Jihad

A Spanish court on Wednesday remanded in custody a Moroccan woman suspected of trying to send her twin 16-year-old sons to Syria to become jihadi fighters, a year after her other son was killed there.

Spain's National Court, which is charged with terrorism cases, ordered that the woman be held in jail for the suspected crime of cooperation with a terrorist organisation.

Police arrested the woman along with her husband and two sons on Tuesday in the northeastern city of Badalona near Barcelona.

The teenagers had been in contact with jihadist recruitment networks and were believed to be on the verge of leaving for Syria via Turkey, the interior ministry said.

The National Court said the woman had "organised for her children the necessary steps to travel to a conflict zone".

The court also accused the woman's husband of "cooperating with a terrorist organisation" but released him on condition that he turn in his passport and present himself to a police station every week while the investigation is carried out.

A juvenile court accused the two teenagers of "membership in a terrorist organisation" and ordered that they be held in a youth detention facility for six months while the investigation continues. The boys will be kept apart from the other youths at the detention centre.

The interior ministry said the brothers had been under surveillance since a third brother had travelled to Syria, where he is believed to have "joined jihadist groups linked to Daesh", using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

That brother died in 2014.

The 16-year-olds had left public school in Spain to study the Quran in Morocco and were "immersed in a process of radicalisation", according to the interior ministry.

Several cells accused of recruiting fighters for the Islamic State group have been dismantled in recent months in Spain, particularly in the Spanish north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.

Since the beginning of the year, 29 suspected jihadists have been arrested in Spain and the authorities have prevented "around 50 foreign fighters" from departing the country, Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said Tuesday.

According to Spanish authorities, around 100 Spaniards have joined jihadist groups in Iraq or Syria, a relatively small number compared to the thousands of French, British, Belgian and German nationals who have travelled to the Middle East to wage jihad.