The Ministry of the Interior has confirmed the arrest in the Netherlands of the alleged perpetrator of the shooting that almost ended the life of Alejo Vidal-Quadras, last November. The arrested person is Mehrez Ayari, the French hitman of Tunisian origin who was subject to an international arrest warrant issued by the National Court, which is investigating the case for an alleged crime of terrorism. The 38-year-old man, who was arrested on June 6, is linked to the Mocro Maffia, the criminal network that has put the State in check in the Netherlands, as confirmed by police sources.
This is the sixth arrest that has been made within the framework of the investigation carried out by the Information Commissariat of the National Police, which took charge of the investigations. The previous arrest also took place in the Netherlands. Police authorities arrested a woman for her alleged involvement in the financing and preparation of the attack against the former president of the Popular Party of Catalonia, according to police sources.
Police investigate the place where the politician was shot
EFE
Mehrez Ayari
In the spotlight from the beginning of the investigation due to his background
Mehrez Ayari was in the spotlight from the first steps of the investigation. The surveillance cameras on Madrid’s Núñez de Balboa street, where the point-blank murder attempt took place, captured it the days before the event. The day he shot one of the founders of Vox, he had his face covered by a motorcycle helmet. He fled from the scene on a large-displacement motorcycle that ended up burned in a field in Fuenlabrada, south of the capital.
The woman who was arrested at the beginning of May would be related to the brother of the now arrested hitman, who shattered Vidal-Quadras’ jaw in broad daylight. The hypothesis that the Mocro Maffia was involved in the attempted murder – which if confirmed would be the first crime committed in Spain by this organization – gained strength after the woman’s arrest in the Netherlands.
Linked to the Mocro Maffia
The criminal network that has put the State in check in the Netherlands
Now, it is confirmed that the sixth detainee, the perpetrator, is linked to the Mocro Maffia, the criminal network that has put the State in the Netherlands in check with death threats to the heir to the throne and the country’s prime minister.
Mehrez Ayari was arrested on June 6 in Haarlem, a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants located on the outskirts of Amsterdam, in the northwest of the Netherlands. The hitman was hiding behind a false identity, prepared to commit another murder, according to police sources. This crime, as the French newspaper has reported Le Mondwould have “political connotations.”
One of those arrested for involvement in the attempted murder
EFE
The arrested hitman has numerous police records. Before allegedly committing the attack against the Spanish politician, he was already wanted by the French authorities for the murder of a trafficker, in August 2022. Precisely for this other crime, the French police arrested Mehrez Ayari’s brother in November 2023, and on his phone they found a couple of key clues.
On the one hand, as confirmed by police sources, a message from the hitman dated three weeks before the assassination attempt on Vidal-Quadras, which read: “Call me when you are there, I will see you at a meeting in Rotterdam.” Also a video sent from an unknown number in Holland in which Vidal-Quadras could be seen at a demonstration. This video was sent ten days before the attack in broad daylight in Madrid.
