Interesting Arrest in Spain

According to this report by Fox News Spanish police arrested a man who allegedly worked 8 – 15 hours online every day on behalf of AQ-C, AQAP and AQIM, busying himself with what was described as recruiting and transportation issues. He is also said to have administered one of the world's most important jihadist forums.

Now this clearly sounds interesting, and I fully share @azelin's speculation that this sounds as if the man (apparently a Jordanian-born Saudi) may have been involved in the al-Fajr project.

Al-Fajr kept me quite busy for a while back in 2008 when I published an article about them after I had learned what Western intelligence services believed to have found out at the time - namely that al-Fajr, which appeared then and still appears mainly as a distribution network for propaganda from the outside, was in reality also a secret communications channel linking AQ central leadership with the leadership of the branches and top tier website administrators. This way crude and uncut versions of terror videos were said to be moved.

Another example according to my sources at the time was that AQ central used the communication system for reminding Iraqi cadres of handing over due money in one case. It was also believed that only around two dozens people had the necessary log in information for that „forum inside the forums“ or for what one agent dubbed „al-Qaida's intranet“.

It is of course not easy to judge whether al-Fajr still has that role today. But if it turned out to be true that the man arrested in Spain was in fact an al-Fajr operative, it would be a very interesting case indeed – and one where I would dearly like to follow court proceedings should he ever be prosecuted.