Five suspected jihadist were arrested, including four Spanish and one Moroccan nationals, after the Spanish Interior Ministry dubbed them as "a grave, concrete and continued threat to security in Europe."
Presumably working for the Islamic State or ISIS, they are suspected of spreading Wahhabi propaganda and attempted to recruit potential militants for the international Salafi jihadist militant group of ISIS.
Internet sites were said to have been used for spreading information. Among them was a Facebook page called "Islam en Espanol" or Islam in Spanish.
Two of the five suspects were arrested in Brussels, Belgium and Wuppertal, Germany. They accordingly managed the Facebook page with an existing 32,500 followers at the time of the arrest.
The group was also encouraging IS attacks all over Europe, while directing their recruitment toward Muslim youth with northwest African lineage.
Two other arrests occurred in Barcelona, Spain and one in Melilla, a Spanish autonomous city located on the north coast of Africa.
Since 2015, about 113 arrests had been made in other countries all over Europe and North Africa.
Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union's anti-terrorism coordinator, said the recent arrests are a testament to the improvement of intelligence sharing between agencies in different European countries.
"The security services and the law-enforcement agencies are sharing much more information than they were before," said Kerchove during a conference on counter extremism by the Club de Madrid in Brussels.
"It's impressive to see the number of plots which have been foiled in recent weeks, the number of people who have been arrested," he added.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the interior ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia announced that another arrest was made on a 20 year Spanish citizen with Moroccan decent. He was allegedly spreading videos contain brutal and barbaric content on social media. Hard drives, laptops and mobile phones were also confiscated.
