Spanish authorities seized containers holding about 20,000 military uniforms and other supplies last month from two port towns, all destined for ISIS and Nusra Front jihadi fighters, the country's Interior Ministry said Thursday in a statement. It was contraband said to be able to "equip an entire army. ... The [three] containers which carried the military uniforms were declared as secondhand clothes so as to not raise suspicions and be able to pass different customs inspections without any difficulty," the statement continued, per the AFP. The confiscations in Valencia and Algeciras are tied to the arrests in February of seven people accused of running a "very active and effective business network" that reportedly helped the militant groups financially and logistically.
Five of the seven people arrested in February were Spanish citizens, the New York Times reports, while the New York Daily News says the other two detained were a Moroccan and a Syrian. An Interior Ministry spokesman says the clothes themselves were not made in Spain; a company owned by one of the suspect reportedly imported used clothing. The uniforms, which weighed nearly five tons, were "perfectly prepared for combat," per NPR, which notes that officials did not say precisely where the uniforms had been bound for next. Investigators are still trying to figure out where the uniforms originated from. (More Spain stories.)