The Spanish Civil Guard and the Federal Police of Belgium rescued a minor girl from a radical Islamic extremist accused of radicalising the minor after the girl disappeared earlier this month.
Civil Guard and Belgian Federal police agents arrested the 34-year-old Belgian man in the town of Verviers who was said to have been radicalising the young girl before she left Spain on July 2nd to travel to Belgium.
Investigators were able to track down the man, who has allegedly been sending terrorist propaganda to the young girl constantly and the girl is said to have left Spain in the company of others known to by radical Islamic extremist recruiters, the newspaper El Mundo reports.
The Spanish Civil Guard, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Central Juvenile Court of the National Court worked quickly to determine the whereabouts of the missing girl before she could be transferred elsewhere and arrested the 34-year-old in his home on July 15th.
The radicalisation of young people has been a major issue across Europe in recent years due to the prevalence of radical Islamic propaganda online, such as in France where a French Interior Ministry report claimed the vast majority of Islamic content on the practice of Islam in France was connected to the radical ideology of Salafism.
The Republican Counter-Discourse Unit (UCDR) conducted research that revealed the prevalence of radical ideology on various social media platforms such as Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram and Facebook.
There have also been radical Islamic terrorist plots carried out or planned by minors in Europe as well, such as the stabbing attack by a 15-year-old Moroccan girl in Germany, who attacked a police officer at Hanover central railway station in 2016.
In Germany that same year, a 12-year-old boy was arrested for attempting a nail bombing attack on a Christmas market in the town of Ludwigshafen in the Rhineland-Palatinate region. the young boy attempted to set off two explosive devices, but failed in his attempt due to the composition of the devices.