The 29-year-old was arrested on Monday along with two more suspects in the southern coastal city of Almería.
A National Police anti-terrorism expert involved in the arrests told The Associated Press that if Abdel Bary had repented he would have sought a legitimate way of returning to Europe.
“At this point, we have no evidence on whether he was planning to stay in Spain or continue his trip,” he added. “We also don’t know what his ultimate goal was.”
Experts on religious extremism had raised worries that Abdel Bary could be part of a dormant cell or an agent in touch with other radicals in Europe.
“He was a nasty guy but it’s been five years since he disappeared, we don’t know what he was up to,” said Olivier Guitta, director of GlobalStrat, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in London. “Is this guy coming into Europe with an idea of committing attacks? Or is he a reformed Jihadist? If he came back for an operation, that is a new game (which) puts everything in shambles.”
The three declined to answer questions from police and from a National Court judge who sent them to a jail near Madrid on Wednesday while a probe continues on their possible links to terrorist organizations. No country has issued international arrest warrants against them.
Abdel Bary, who carried no documents at the time of his arrest, was stripped of his British citizenship when he allegedly joined the IS in 2013. He has Egyptian nationality and his Egyptian father, Abdel Abdul Bary, is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States for his role in the 1998 al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.
Spanish investigators say foreign intelligence showed that the former rapper was in conflict-struck northern Syria at the end of last year. But the three suspects had recently been to Turkey before traveling to Algeria, according to the investigation of the General Information Department of Spain’s national police.
“There are some 100 foreign terror fighters on our radar,” the investigator said. “But this is the first time that a returned Jihadist with such a high profile is arrested in Spain.”
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