(Morocco World News) March 11 marked the anniversary of the 2004 Madrid train bombings, also known as 11-M, which Moroccan national Youssef Belhadj masterminded. The attacks killed 193, injured 2,000, and shocked the world.
Fifteen years later, terrorism in Spain has evolved strikingly, according to a new report released Monday, March 11, by the Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid. Individuals that Spain has identified as terrorists since 2012 are younger and more educated than their predecessors, the report said, and a rising number are Moroccan.
Elcano’s report analyzed the profiles of 215 terrorists who died or were apprehended in Spain since the 11-M bombings. A turning point in Spanish terrorism surfaces from the data: mid-2012, the year the conflict in Syria escalated into a civil war and global terrorism’s center of gravity shifted from Al Qaeda to ISIS. After that year, the annual average of terrorist detentions in Spain leapt from 23 in 2009-2011 to 60 in 2012-2018.
