(JTA) — Spanish police arrested a "self-radicalized" Moroccan they suspect of planning terrorist attacks in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.
Mohamed Echaabi, 22, was arrested on Feb. 7 in Valencia, police announced the following day.
Police said he fit the "same profile" as Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old French-Algerian Islamist terrorist who killed three Jewish children and a rabbi at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse last March before being killed in a standoff with police, according to the French news service AFP. Merah visited Spain in 2007.
Echaabi reportedly traveled to the Gaza Strip in 2011 planning to carry out a suicide bomb attack against Israel, according to CNN.
Described as a lone wolf, Echaabi was "self-radicalized" using the Internet and was recruited by terrorist networks, much like Merah, Spanish police said in a statement, according to AFP.
He intended to commit terrorist acts in Spain and other European countries, police said.
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