The Civil Guard has arrested three people as alleged members of a “far-right radical group strongly influenced by Nazionalsocialism and fascism”, who are charged with various crimes, including incitement to hatred in Burgos and Madrid.
According to investigations carried out in recent months by the Armed Institute, they are the authors of several incidents in the Burgos town of Castrillo Mota de Judíos, which for years has been the target of anti-Semitic graffiti and actions.
As explained this morning by the Government delegate in Castilla y León, Virginia Barcones, the operation, called ‘Perinola-Lienzo’, is the result of the confluence of two parallel investigations initiated at the time by the Civil Guard in Burgos and Madrid.
In the province of Burgos, the investigation was launched after the latest incidents that occurred in Castrillo Mota de Judíos. There, since 2014, up to nine episodes of anti-Semitic actions have been recorded. In the last one, which occurred this past summer, two containers were burned next to crop fields at the time of maximum fire risk. In addition, during these years, threatening graffiti has been registered , an attempt has been made to burn the municipal flag and antisemitic propaganda has been distributed, generating great concern among the fifty residents of the town.
For its part, the operation in Madrid began after the location of antisemitic graffiti in several buildings, cemeteries and cultural centers of the Jewish community in recent years.
Once both branches of investigation had advanced, the agents verified that the spelling of the graffiti responded to the same pattern in all cases, so it was decided to unify the entire investigation in a single operation, coordinated from the Investigating Court No. 3 of Burgos.
After several months of investigations, the Civil Guard has managed to identify the three alleged perpetrators of all these acts. They are two men, 37 and 38 years old, respectively, and a 43-year-old woman, all of them personally linked and residents in the Community of Madrid. The two men had a previous history of injuries, threats or gender-based violence, while the woman had no history.
Once the siege on them was tightened, and under a court order, the Civil Guard has searched two homes in the Madrid towns of Algete and Las Rozas, where innumerable Nazi propaganda material has been located, as well as three taser pistols (two of them camouflaged ), two BB guns and various narcotic substances. In fact, an indoor marijuana plantation was found in one of the houses.
While waiting to conclude the investigations, the investigators consider that all this material served as “micro-financing” for the activities of the group, which was very “radicalized” and “had entered into an escalation of violence.”
For all these reasons, the Civil Guard considers that the three detainees are the authors of separate crimes of incitement to hatred, punishable by between 1 and 4 years in prison. The elderly are also charged with two separate crimes of damage to communal property, belonging to a criminal group and against public health. At the moment, the three have been provisionally released, but precautionary measures have been requested to prevent them from approaching any key building or center for the Jewish community, against which they centralized their messages.
In addition, the operation remains open with the aim of unraveling many of the details of the activity that those now detained were allegedly carrying out.
In any case, it is, according to Barcones, a very “complex” and “important” operation, since we are talking about “very dangerous crimes for coexistence.”
