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April 4, 2006

Spain: Internet Islamist Gets Ten Years' Jail

News from CNN reports that Algerian born Ahmed Brahim has been given a 10 year jail sentence for trying to start a web site aimed at recruiting jihadists and to give out fatwas to justify terror attacks.

According to the BBC, Brahim was arrested on Saturday 14 April, 2002. At the time of his arrest, the result of seven months' investigation involving countries such as the US, France and Germany, Brahim was suspected of being Al-Qaeda's chief financier in Europe. He was also suspected of involvement with the bombing of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya on Friday August 7 1998.

Born in 1945, Brahim and his Finnish wife Pirjo had a business buying and selling yachts, and also worked as a public relations consultant. He had lived in Spain since 1987, and had no previous convictions at the time of his arrest. According to Daniel Pipes, in 1999, a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, said that he had regular contact with Tariq Ramadan.

Brahim had meetings with at least six Al-Qaeda/Islamist operatives, including Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, who would be implicated in the Madrid train-bombings of March 2004, and also Mahmoud Malhoum Salim, who stayed at Brahim's Mallorca home in 1998. Salim, believed linked to the African bombings, would later be convicted in 2002 for attempted murder in the US, and was given a life sentence. During Salim's trial he had repeatedly stabbed a correctional officer in the eyes.

At the National Court on Friday (31 March), Brahim (pictured above) was found guilty on terror charges. It was said at this trial that in 2002, Brahim had been "creating, to distribute by Internet, a Web page to teach the most radical and extremist Islamic content, that proposes 'holy war' against all those who don't share their beliefs".

The court's 55 page ruling said: "The project aimed to permit any Muslim access to the most radical preachers of holy war." The website was to be written in French, to reach a wider number of Muslims living in the West than an Arabic-language site.

The BBC had reported in 2002 that before Brahim's arrest, Brahim had sent money to some European countries, and had also sent computer equipment to a number of Arab countries.

As Brahim has been in custody for four years, he will only serve six years in jail.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at April 4, 2006 7:47 PM

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