UA priest was also seriously injured in this attack which hit two churches a few hundred meters apart in this port city in southern Spain located opposite the Moroccan coast.
Arrested immediately after the attack, the suspect, a 25-year-old Moroccan, “has never been on the radar of a national service for radicalization” in Spain or in neighboring countries, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said Thursday evening during a visit to Algeciras.
If the executive of the socialist Pedro Sanchez is waiting for the investigation to progress to qualify the nature of the attack, Marlaska has not ruled out that he “may be terrorist in nature”pointing out that “all hypotheses remain open”. He clarified that there was no “no third parties” involved.
According to the government, the suspect, who lived near the target churches of his attack, was the subject of a “deportation procedure for irregular situation” since June. Gibraltar authorities said he was expelled in August 2019 from the British enclave, which he reached by jet ski.
A survey for “alleged acts of terrorism” was entrusted on Wednesday evening to a judge from the Madrid Court of the National Audience, in charge of terrorism cases. In the document authorizing the search of the suspect’s home and consulted by AFP, this magistrate makes the link between the attack committed by Yassine Kanjaa and the “jihadist Salafism”.
The judge relates in particular how the suspect “looked up at the sky shouting words in Arabic among which you could hear Allah” when he wore “one last deathblow” to the sacristan. He also assures that after his arrest, he “repeatedly shouted Allah Akbar”.
According to the facts reported by the Ministry of the Interior, the suspect attacked on Wednesday after 7:00 p.m. (18:00 GMT) the priest of the Church of San Isidro, Antonio Rodríguez, “armed with a machete, seriously wounding him”.
“He then went to the Nuestra Señora de La Palma church, where he attacked the sexton”, Diego Valencia. The latter has “managed to get out of the church, but was caught outside by the assailant who inflicted several fatal injuries on him”, the ministry continued. Seriously injured in the neck, the priest was, for his part, “out of danger”said his religious community.
This attack plunged Algeciras, a city of 120,000 inhabitants with 129 nationalities according to the municipality, into stupor.
Several hundred people gathered at midday in front of the Nuestra Señora de La Palma church. A minute of silence was observed while the church bells rang, AFP noted. Flowers were laid and candles lit in the square where the sexton was killed.
Present in the outbuildings of this church at the time of the attack, José Manuel Calvo told AFP that he heard the assailant cry out. Direct witnesses told him that“He was talking about Allah”.
“At times like these, you think you are in a movie”car “When it happens to you, you don’t believe it”told AFP Juan José Marina, the priest of the church, who was not in Algeciras at the time of the attack. “If I’m alive it’s because Diego is dead”, he added, very moved. Calls not to break the coexistence between the communities have also multiplied in Spain after this attack.
condemning facts “injustifiables”the secretary general of the Spanish bishops’ conference, César García Magán, warned against “the danger of demonizing communities”. The Islamic Commission of Spain, one of the main organizations representing Muslims in the country, condemned “firmly”, in a press release, a “abominable criminal action” and expressed his “solidarity with (his) Catholic brothers”.
The last major attack perpetrated in Spain dates back to August 2017, when two attacks by a jihadist cell left 16 dead and 140 injured on the Ramblas avenue in Barcelona and in the seaside resort of Cambrils (northeast).