SOLO JIHADIST IN AL ANDALUS

The anti-terrorist experts have issued an alert on the new and lethal development in Al Qaeda – the use of western looking men and women, who live habitually in Europe or the USA and who act alone without any link to Islamic cells who are “practically undetectable”.

This is the stark warning from a conference in international terrorism organized by the UN in which members of the Guardia Civil Grupo de Análisis de Terrorismo Trasnacional participated. It has resulted in the issuing of an alert to the activities of what are called “free radicals”.

The Guardia Civil terrorism specialists along with their counterparts in the rest of the western world were alarmed by the frustrated attempt to bring down the flight over Detroit and the massacre at Fort Hood in which a lone terrorist shot dead 13 soldiers. This has led them to hunt for this new category of Al Qaeda operative – the solo Jihadist.

These terrorists are self financing and are equal to the small Islamic cells that have been dismantled in recent years in Spain. They have been dedicated to small time crime such as thefts or drug trafficking in order to raise the funds for their activities.

They do not receive training in the camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan but instead use the internet where they can link up with Jihad websites and receiving training in terrorist methods.

Second generation immigrants in to Spain who have been hit hard by the financial crisis and unemployment can be easily indoctrinated into radical Islamic ways. The difficult economic times can also hamper their integration in to their new homes in Spain or other western countries.

The spotlight on these new terrorists has been centred on Spain – the Al Andalus of the Islamists - who have used this name as their trade mark to spread Al Qaeda propaganda especially in the Islamic States across the Strait of Gibraltar in North Africa.