ONE of the Jihad recruits from Catalunya caught en route to Syria in a recent swoop sent a 'goodbye' letter to his girlfriend telling her he 'hoped Allah would bring her a better man than him'.
A search on the home of Taufiq Mouchouch after he was captured at the Bulgarian border revealed the draft – and final copy – of the note he sent to Laila, his partner.
Written in Spanish but full of spelling mistakes, it read: “By the time you get this letter, Laila, I might not be here, I'll have left in hijra fisabelilah [on a journey in Allah's name], because the police are on our trail and I'd rather they arrested me for Allah than for nothing.”
He said several times how much he loved her, and, “don't think badly of me, but Allah comes first.”
“I hope, insh'Allah [God willing] that Allah brings you a better man than me.”
Although the draft of the letter said he was going to Syria, Taufiq Mouchouch did not mention his actual destination in the end copy.
Mouchouch went to Laila's house to say goodbye a few days before he and two other men left for Syria in May to join the Islamic State, having already attempted the journey twice and fearing police capture.
Laila, who is also under investigation, started a campaign in local mosques in the Barcelona area to raise funds to get the three men out of jail, where they were being held temporarily pending further inquiries.
She said she needed to raise €8,000, but according to conversations recorded by the police, a large number of worshippers did not want to donate as they thought Laila was heading off to join the Islamic State herself and was surreptitiously seeking funds to do so.
Another woman apparently said to Laila that she hoped when Mouchouch and the other two were brought back to Spain that they would be 'extradited to Madrid rather than Barcelona', because the Guardia Civil were 'not the same' as their Catalunya counterparts, the Mossos d'Esquadra, who were 'not nice people'.
Investigations into the Jihad cell Mouchouch had joined – which saw a police officer disguise as a recruit to attend meetings and become involved in communications between members - revealed one of the suspects, Antonio S. C., alias Ali, was a Spaniard who had converted to Islam before turning 'radical', and that another, Yacoub, tried to convince his father that the attacks in Paris which led to the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo magazine editorial staff was a montage.
He said the streets shown on the TV 'did not exist in Paris' and that actions of this nature are 'forbidden in Islam'.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com