Spanish police announced on Wednesday the arrest of a suspected gunman involved in the shooting of a right-wing Spanish politician with ties to an Iranian opposition group.
The incident occurred on a Madrid street last November.
The suspect, a Frenchman of Tunisian descent with a criminal record, is the sixth person detained in connection with the attempted murder, following an earlier arrest in Colombia.
The victim, 79-year-old Alejo Vidal-Quadras, survived the attack despite being shot in the face on a sidewalk in the affluent Salamanca neighborhood of central Madrid. The attack took place in broad daylight on November 9, with the gunman wearing a helmet and riding as a passenger on a motorcycle. The bullet passed through Vidal-Quadras’ jaw.
Vidal-Quadras is a former leader of the conservative People’s Party in Catalonia and a co-founder of the far-right Vox party.
“Dutch agents have arrested in the Netherlands the alleged perpetrator of the shooting against Alejo Vidal-Quadras in Madrid,” Spanish police said in a statement posted on X. It did not give his name.
The arrest was made under an international warrant issued by a Spanish court, and the suspect was identified through CCTV footage from the scene.
The investigation is being led by a Spanish anti-terrorism court. Dutch authorities have not commented on the arrest.
According to a judicial source, the suspect is also wanted in France for the killing of a drug trafficker.
Vidal-Quadras has alleged that the Iranian government hired hitmen to assassinate him due to his association with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a prominent exiled opposition group.
“So far the people arrested were secondary, but the (alleged) hitman is a significant part and the police will certainly question him to find the people who are behind the attack,” Vidal-Quadras told media.
He expressed “absolute certainty” that the Iranian government was responsible, though he admitted he had no concrete evidence. Iran, which considers the Council a terrorist organization, has not commented on the accusation.
Vidal-Quadras has urged the European Union to adopt a firmer stance against Iran, criticizing the bloc’s approach of “appeasement, negotiation, dialogue, and concessions.”
In October 2022, Vidal-Quadras was placed on an Iranian sanctions list following EU sanctions imposed after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in custody for allegedly violating Iran’s mandatory dress code.
