MADRID, June 23 (Xinhua) -- A man allegedly involved in an extremist network was arrested in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the north coast of Africa, the Spanish interior ministry reported on Friday.
The 40-year-old Dutch national was of Moroccan origin and is accused of being part of a recruitment network with links to DAESH and AQMI, the al-Qaeda of the Maghreb region.
The detainee had companies in Denmark to evade taxes and through which he is believed to have financed the recruitment network.
So far, the police have identified 24 different companies and have estimated that the tax evasion has surpassed 8 million euros (8.9 million U.S. dollars), which has helped send at least ten people of different nationalities, Danish, German and Spanish among them, to areas of conflict.
The operation, which was carried out by the authorities of Morocco, Denmark, Spain, and Europol, is still open and police are looking into social media profiles and the extent of the network's activities.
According to the ministry, since June 2015, when the country raised its terrorist alert to a level four out of five, a total of 173 suspected extremists have been arrested in Spain and abroad. A total of 218 have been arrested since the beginning of 2015.
Spain suffered the worst terrorist attack in European history in March 2004 when ten bombs exploded on four trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and wounding more than 1,800 people.
