At 7:28 p.m. on January 25, 2023, Yassine Kanjaa entered the courtyard of the church of San Isidro in Algeciras brandishing a large machete. The sacristan of the temple was there. She went towards him and began to hit him, although the religious man managed to flee. He did not escape beyond the Plaza Alta of this Cadiz town where Kanjaa gave him two strong blows with the machete, one on the neck and another on the head, which caused his death.
This is part of the story given by the Prosecutor’s Office of the National Court in its indictment against the jihadist from Algeciras, who was involved in the terrible attack that resulted in the death of the sacristan of the Church of Our Lady of La Palma Diego Valencia and with several injured. The Public Ministry asks for 50 years in prison for the alleged terrorist. It involves five years in prison for a crime of terrorist murder, 15 for another crime of attempted terrorist murder and another ten for a crime of terrorist injuries.
In his indictment, the prosecutor recounts the sequence of events of the terrorist attack. At around 6:30 p.m., Kanjaa entered the church of San Isidro, located in the square of the same name, in the city of Algeciras, and there he scolded a person who was inside, saying: “Why do you believe in a plaster?”, while pointing to an image of the Virgin.
“Then he grabbed a Bible and hit it against a bench. Yassine left the church around 6:45 p.m. shouting ‘The world is going to end’ and ‘Allah,'” says the Prosecutor’s Office, which points out that he then went to his house, He turned off his mobile phone and grabbed “a large machete that he usually kept under his bed.”
Around 7:00 p.m., on Cristóbal Colón Street, he crossed paths with a man and attacked him from behind, hitting him at the level of his right eyebrow, breaking his glasses. “Then he hit him on the shoulder and chest while he yelled at him ‘You work for magic’ and showed him the machete that he was carrying under his clothes,” the document indicates, adding that the man fled the scene. .
15 minutes later, still according to the Prosecutor’s Office, Kanjaa returned to the San Isidro church and entered brandishing the machete. “At that time, mass was being celebrated, which was attended by about ten people. Yassin went to the altar and the priest who was officiating the mass tried to leave through the central aisle of the church. Yassine chased him and hit him, causing him to fall to the ground in the same hallway,” the letter adds.
It was at that moment that Kanjaa struck him hard on the back of the head with the machete. Next, he left the church of San Isidro and went to the church of Nuestra Señora de la Palma, in the Plaza Alta, about 200 meters away from the previous one, and entered the church patio at 7:28 p.m., where the sacristan of the temple was there.
“Yassine went towards him and began to hit him with the machete,” recalls the Prosecutor’s Office, which explains that the religious tried to protect himself with a chair and left the church patio to the Plaza Alta, while Yassine chased him and hit him with the machete. weapon.
Then Valencia, the murdered sacristan, fell to the ground in the middle of the square. Kanjaa “went up to him and gave him two strong blows with the machete, one on the neck and the other on the head, causing the injuries that caused his death.” “Yassine then went to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Europe located in the same Plaza Alta and repeatedly knocked on the door, which was closed. He then continued along Murillo Street, to the so-called Mirador del Muro. During this journey he brandished the machete. Finally He left the machete on the ground in this place and knelt down, at which point he was arrested by agents of the Algeciras Local Police who had gone to the scene, alerted by witnesses who witnessed the previous events,” he concludes.
The Prosecutor’s Office states in the document that Kanjaa had “experienced in the months prior to the attack a process of radicalization, assuming the most rigorous theses of Islam, which defend the incompatibility of this religion with the principles and values ??of other religions and the need to act to favor their elimination and that of Muslims who do not follow the precepts of their religion.
In this way, Kanjaa “chose the places of his action, two temples of the Catholic church”, attacking a “priest and a sacristan in these two churches, with the intention of causing their death and with the aim of terrorizing Christians.” “.
The Prosecutor’s Office recalls that Kanjaa had a psychotic condition that caused delusions and was probably schizophrenic. “At the time the events took place, he presented an acute psychotic decompensation with a significant degree of affective and behavioral involvement, which would very severely affect his volitional and intellectual capacities,” points out the prosecutor, who, however, makes it clear that “his volitional capacities and intellectual abilities were not totally nullified by his illness”.
