Two arrested in Spain for selling drugs to buy weapons for race war

Two men have been arrested in Spain for selling drugs as part of a plot to make money to buy weapons to start a future race war.

The men, who have not yet been identified by police, had planned to use the money raised to purchase weapons and create “isolated white supremacist groups,” police said. 

Officers made the arrests in Ronda in Andalusia and Pamplona in northwestern Spain after tracking concerning messages posted online.

Among the messages officers discovered were posts praising Brenton Tarrant, the Australian who shot 51 Muslim people dead in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March of last year. 

“In messages on the internet, they expressed the intention to get arms and prepare what they called a race war with the intention to carry out some form of attack,” police said in a statement.

In one arrest, police found a Nazi flag and other white supermacist symbols. 

The two men appeared in court in Lleida in Catalonia, where they faced charges of race hate crimes, possession of arms and explosives, support for racist terrorism and offenses against public health. 

The suspects have since been released on bail.