Yassine Kanjaa, the alleged jihadist who led an attack in Algeciras last January that resulted in the death of a sacristan and several injuries, assured the agents that he felt “a chosen one” of Allah and that the murder of the religious opened him “the gates of paradise”. This is clear from Kanjaa’s statement before the National Police agents three days after the events and which is included in the summary of the case, to which Europa Press has had access.
Kanjaa, who maintained that no one had “indoctrinated” him, assured that “three or four days” before the attack he felt “something strange” inside. Specifically, and after viewing the rites practiced by Christians, he felt that “they had a pact with Satan.”
The alleged jihadist defined himself as a “soldier of God for the cause of Islam”, but acting “independently”. If he decided to take action, he stated, it was because he felt “a divine force” inside of him. In those days prior to the attack, Kanjaa “argued with a Moroccan-Spanish” who attended a local church “for being a convert and not practicing the true religion: Islam.” After arguing with that man, he attacked him “with the intention of killing him.”
After being kicked out of the Church, the alleged jihadist “felt so bad about religious practice in that church that he felt a divine revelation that told him that he should act against the rites” that were practiced there. It was then that Kanjaa decided to return with a machete with a single intention: “he had to kill all the priests that were in the church.”
After going to the first church, Kanjaa met a priest who “had an open book while he was giving mass.” There, and “without having any mercy towards him because he had a hateful heart, he struck him in the neck with the intention of taking his life.”
The man attacked turned out to be the priest Antonio RodrÃguez Lucena, who had to be admitted as a result of his injuries, but who recovered favorably from them.
Moments later, Kanjaa went to a second church and ended the life of the sacristan, who “tried to defend himself with a chair.” His intention, he confessed to the agents, “was to cut his throat and kill him to put an end to his wickedness.”
The intention of this attack, in his own words, was “to free the parishioners from the message of the priests.” However, this attack would have been decided “on the fly”, since Kanjaa “did not have it planned in advance”.
At that moment, the agents asked the alleged jihadist if he believed that this “punishment” was justified. Kanjaa then maintained that it was time to act before the supposed arrival of the “end of the world”. In this context, the defendant defended that with the murder of the sacristan he managed to open “the gates of paradise for him and for everyone” who followed him.
In his statement, Kanjaa was also questioned about the terrorist organizations Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Despite knowing them, he acknowledged that they did not represent “his ideological ideas” because they “kill Muslims.”
In another report, signed on January 29 and to which this news agency has had access, the investigators from the General Information Police Station and the Algeciras Local Information Brigade state that “already in the days prior to the commission of the action terrorist, Kanjaa was showing altered behavior patterns, typical of the mentality of people radicalized in the Islamic religion and for this reason, people close to him try to reprimand him and change his behavior.
The agents highlight that among the information collected from his mobile phone after the search carried out at his home, there is a WhatsApp audio sent on January 24 in which Kanjaa addresses one of his aunts and insists that he should pray more than usual. usual.
“This is especially striking if one also takes into account the date on which the audio was sent, just one day before the commission of the attack. It seems that Kanjaa, already at that moment, was beginning to consider the possible commission of a violent action, and for this reason, he asks his relatives to pray ‘more than usual'”, the researchers emphasize.
In the thread, they refer to another audio message in which Kanjaa stresses the importance of declaring the “oneness of God” before dying. For the agents, this is “one more indication” that the young man “already had in mind the execution of a violent action in the name of Allah.”
In turn, there is another audio, from January 23, in which “the religious radicalism of the person investigated can be reflected again.” “He says he lives surrounded by ‘evils’, in clear reference to Christians, the majority religion in Spain, whom he wants ‘God to punish them with a worm and eat their stomachs,'” the agents point out, considering that it is of “one more sample of the hatred” that the young man feels “towards the Catholic religion”.
Within the framework of the report there is another WhatsApp audio, this time from January 21, which would have been sent by someone “who could be Yassin’s father” and who is “concerned about his son’s religious attitude”. “Here we are, Yassin, what’s up? Don’t put those things in your head… The Koran and that, you have to pray and obey God, but not tell people, each one has to pray for himself. Do you understand me? We are at the end of the world, son”, picks up the transcript.
According to the report, documentation was seized from the young man in his multiple room, including a “handwritten sheet of paper with various annotations expressing what appear to be chemical formulas”; a copy of the Koran; a Moroccan passport with various entry and exit stamps in Ceuta; and an identification document issued by Penal Institutions in the name of a brother of Kanjaa; as well as a Moroccan identity card.
The police report also states that “a cloth cover to store and carry a machete-type knife, black and white, broken and frayed” was found in his room. “Because of its shape and size, it is highly likely that it is the sheath of the machete with which Kanjaa would have ended the life of the sacristan and committed the terrorist action.”
