Ahmed Samsam asks Spain to reopen his terrorism conviction

Ahmed Samsam has asked Spain to reopen the criminal case that resulted in his 2018 conviction for joining Islamic State and an eight-year prison sentence. His Spanish lawyer submitted the application on Wednesday.

The request comes exactly one year after Denmark’s Supreme Court ruled that the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, PET, and the Defence Intelligence Service, FE, had to acknowledge that Samsam worked for the services during trips to Syria in 2013 and 2014.

Samsam first travelled to Syria in 2012 and returned several times through 2014. Spanish authorities arrested him in June 2017, and he was convicted the following year. During the trial, he said he had fought for Syrian rebels rather than Islamic State. He also said PET and FE recruited him after his first trip to Syria.

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During the subsequent process, Ahmed Samsam received valuable information from the intelligence services, which has been used in the application and supports the belief that the case can be reopened.

Following the Danish Supreme Court ruling, the intelligence services acknowledged that Samsam had cooperated with them during his journeys. They contacted his lawyer through the government’s legal representative to discuss the next steps and provided information used in the reopening application. They also arranged authorized translations of extensive judgments from Denmark’s Eastern High Court and Supreme Court, without accepting liability.

Samsam’s lawyer, René Offersen, said his client still had not received all the information he requested and considered that unacceptable. Offersen quoted Spanish lawyer Benet Salellas Vilar as calling the application a strong one. Salellas Vilar declined to predict how long the process would take and asked Samsam to be patient.

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It is a strong application to reopen the Spanish criminal case.