The religious figure accused of recruiting young people for jihad in Mallorca says the evidence is false.

PalmThe Salafist preacher accused of recruiting and indoctrinating young people for jihad around a mosque in Inca, Tarik C., told the court that the police manipulated evidence against him and planted a fake video promoting terrorism on his computer while he was in prison. The cleric, whom Moroccan authorities banned from preaching in 2013 due to his radicalism, has been on trial since Monday at the National Court along with an alleged collaborator, Hussein FL, and four of his followers, who were supposedly recruited in Mallorca. The prosecution is seeking eight years in prison for Tarik C. and his alleged assistant for recruitment and terrorist indoctrination, and five years for the other defendants for self-indoctrination. The defense, for its part, requested acquittal.

During his statement, Tarik C. defended the series of videos they recorded in 2015 entitled Toufik went to Syria He had no intention of encouraging anyone to join ISIS, but "quite the opposite." According to his version of events, the police manipulated the evidence and introduced a "fake video" to make it seem as though the materials promoted terrorism, attempting—unsuccessfully—to provide the court with a USB drive containing the original videos. The preacher also recalled that he had previously been falsely accused of having links to one of the perpetrators of the 2015 Bataclan attack in Paris. His alleged accomplice, Hussein FL, testified that he moved to Germany for economic reasons. ToufikThe video, not included in the case, shows the protagonist being rescued by his father to prevent him from going on a jihad. Defense lawyers have compared these videos to the film. Sirado, Spain's Oscar candidate, which also tells a story of radicalization set in Morocco.

Several of the defendants have claimed they were unaware of the true subject matter of the videos and that they participated at the insistence of Tarik and Hussein. However, hundreds of videos containing jihadist content, including executions and beheadings, were seized from some of them. One of the defendants justified the material by saying he kept it "for personal research." The prosecution emphasized in its closing statement that there is evidence linking the defendants to terrorism, such as messages of support for the Islamic State and expressions of a desire to wage jihad or attack "unbelieving people, enemies of God."