JAILED TERRORIST HAS CHILD CUSTODY RIGHTS, COURT RULES

A Spanish court has rejected an attempt by a mother to revoke her ex-husband's custody over their teenage daughter, despite him being a convicted terrorist serving an eight-year sentence for recruiting jihadist fighters. Raquel Alonso, who has two children from a more than 20-year relationship with Nabil Benazzou, said her ex-husband was an “aggressive and intransigent father” after he became radicalized in 2011. He was arrested in 2014. The couple have two children, but their son has reached the adult age of 18. In what has been described in Spain as the first case examining whether a parent's extreme jihadist beliefs should be considered in a custody case, the judge ruled “there was no reason to remove custody from the father,” despite Alonso's descriptions of his efforts to indoctrinate their children. In her book, Married to the Enemy, Alonso describes how Moroccan-born Benazzou was the “love of her life,” a tolerant and well-educated man with a good job as an engineer, but was radicalized by the al-Andalus Brigade, a branch of al-Qaida.