Spanish police have recently completed a cross-regional joint law enforcement operation, successfully arresting the 17-year-old leader of an extremist group and uncovering a dangerous organization that manipulates minors online and promotes extreme violence.
Joint Operation Thwarts Teenage Leader
The operation was jointly carried out by the Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil), the Catalan regional police (Mossos d’Esquadra), and the Basque regional police (Ertzaintza). In the province of Gipuzkoa in the Basque Country, law enforcement officers arrested a 17-year-old Spanish national. According to police intelligence, he is identified as the leader of the transnational extremist group ‘764’ in Spain.
The teen is accused of a series of serious crimes, including sending death threats to several public figures earlier this year, such as Irene Moreno, a Member of the European Parliament for the Podemos party, and commentator Sarah Santaolalla. He is also accused of sending numerous threats to public places like schools, libraries, and government agencies, creating social panic.
Unmasking “764”: A Virtual Cult of Violence
‘764’ is a virtual transnational network founded in 2021 by an American teenager. The group’s ideology is a mixture of Nazism, Satanism, and pedophilic tendencies, with a core goal of destabilizing society through violent acts. Investigators found that the group exhibits clear cult-like characteristics, with one of its main activities being the recruitment and manipulation of mentally immature minors, who are then subjected to sexual extortion.
The arrested teen is also suspected of engaging in online harassment activities such as ‘doxing’ and ‘swatting.’ He threatened others by illegally obtaining and publishing their personal information and made false emergency calls about his victims, causing armed police to show up at their homes, which inflicted significant psychological trauma and physical danger on them and their families.
Manipulating Minors into Extreme Self-Harm
The investigation reveals the suspect was primarily active in social media chat rooms, video game platforms, and instant messaging apps. He used these platforms to psychologically manipulate other teenagers, forcing them to perform acts of extreme humiliation and self-harm, and to record the process.
These acts included so-called ‘blood walls,’ where victims were forced to write the group’s name or the perpetrator’s online handle on their bodies using their own blood or even feces, and ‘cutsigns,’ where victims were induced or forced to carve wounds on themselves with sharp objects. These videos and photos were then circulated within the group to demonstrate the perpetrator’s control over the victim and enhance their status. Police even discovered that the suspect had threatened in his communications to livestream a murder.
International Alert and Counter-Terrorism Context
During searches of two residences linked to the suspect, police seized numerous electronic devices and handwritten notes containing Nazi and Satanic symbols. In its latest terrorism trends report, Europol has classified ‘764’ and other groups affiliated with ‘The Com’ network as high-risk entities. The report notes that members of these groups are mostly teenagers and young men obsessed with extreme violence, nihilism, and misogyny.
Currently, several countries besides Spain have launched investigations into ‘764,’ which is implicated in various criminal activities including sexual extortion, distributing child sexual exploitation material, inducing self-harm, and animal cruelty. Due to its harmful nature, Canada officially designated ‘764’ as a terrorist group in December 2025, and Spain’s Ministry of the Interior has included it in the monitoring scope of its National Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
