ISIS recruiting officers are targeting refugee camps and asylum centres for new fanatics, spy chiefs have warned

Germany’s intelligence service president Hans-Georg Maassen says spooks have recorded more than 300 attempts to recruit refugees as jihadists.

And he fears the real total could be much higher.

He told local media: “There are more than 340 cases known to us of radical Islamists targeting refugees for new recruits.”

He added: “But as these are the only ones that have been monitored by us, it is likely the true number of cases is much higher.”

Agents have briefed asylum centre staff on how to identify recruiters and how to monitor refugees who are most at risk.

Maassen explained: “It is well known that among the asylum seekers there are many young Sunni males who often come from a conservative Islamic environment.

express.co.uk

The militants of the Italian terror cell are reportedly associated with Abu Nassim, a 47-year-old Tunisian man who lived in Italy for years before becoming an ISIS commander in Libya.

Born Moez Ben Abdelkader Fezzani, Abu Nassim first arrived in Italy in 1989 to work on construction sites, but later was arrested by US forces in Pakistan in 2001 and eventually deported to Tunisia. Since 2014, he reportedly commands Islamic State forces around the Libyan port of Sabratha.

The latest reports came amidst growing concerns that Islamic State jihadists couldinfiltrate migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa into Italy in order to carry out lone wolf terror attacks on Italian territory.

Italian authorities have been stepping up counterterrorism operations, and in the course of a week ordered the consecutive deportations of two suspected jihadist sympathizers.

Last week, the Interior Ministry mandated the expulsion of Bilel Chiahoui, a Tunisian national accused of planning an attack at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Counterterrorism forces arrested the 26-year-old in Pisa after he posted messages threatening to attack the monument on social media.

Then, on Saturday, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano ordered that a second Tunisian, the imam Hosni Hachemi Ben Hassem, be deported for inciting racial hatred. The 49-year-old imam, based in a mosque in the southern Italian Puglia region, had been arrested earlier on charges of recruiting fighters for terrorist cells, but was later acquitted.

Hachemi is the ninth imam to be expelled from Italy since the country adopted a “zero tolerance” policy toward Islamist extremism early in 2015. Alfano, who has signed a total of 109 expulsion orders since the start of last year, 43 of them in 2016, credits the policy with reducing the risk of a terror attack on Italian soil.

The Islamic State has repeatedly threatened to attack Italy, and earlier this month released a video vowing it would “conquer Rome.”

Representatives of Italy’s Northern League Party expressed consternation over the news of an ISIS cell in Milan. Paul Grima, deputy of the Northern League and the Secretary of the Lombard League, said that the report “raises the alarm on our territory, especially regarding Milan and Lombardy.”

“We ask the government to take immediate action to avoid becoming complicit in attacks,” echoed Lombardy’s Councillor for Safety, Simona Bordonali.

breitbart.com

Austrian authorities have arrested nine Iraqi men on suspicion of rape for an attack on a German tourist in Vienna on New Year’s Day, police said Monday.

The men range in age from 21 to 47 and are all either asylum-seekers or recently were granted asylum, Vienna police spokesman Paul Eidenberger told The Associated Press. They were arrested at several locations in raids Saturday and Sunday, he said.

They are alleged to have taken the woman from Vienna’s downtown Schwedenplatz and then assaulted her in an apartment where two of the suspects lived. The woman was in town visiting a friend but had become separated from her during the New Year’s celebrations, Eidenberger said.

Police say the men have denied the accusations.

The 28-year-old victim from northern Germany went to the police later on Jan. 1, saying she couldn’t remember where the attack took place but that she knew something had happened, Eidenberger said. The woman, who had been drinking and suspects she was drugged, has no recollection of being taken to the apartment, but police were able to use video surveillance and other evidence to determine the location, he said.

They also used DNA evidence to link at least four of the men to the crime, but “all were involved,” Eidenberger said.

Prosecutors are now applying to a court to have the men held as they continue their investigation. Monday was a holiday in Austria and prosecutors’ office phones went unanswered.

Austria was one of the main routes through which hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers traveled into Europe last year. The influx eventually prompted the government to set limits on asylum applications that sparked a series of border closures, shutting down the Balkan route used by many migrants.

ap.org

Libyan authorities have warned Italy about an ISIS cell based in the Milan area with links to one of the extremist group’s battle-hardened veterans, Italian media reported Sunday

The existence of the network was reportedly revealed by documents seized by Libyan agents after government forces took over an ISIS headquarters in the city of Sirte earlier this week.

The Italy-based militants were said to be associates of Abu Nassim, 47, a Tunisian who lived in Italy for most of his 20s and subsequently fought in Afghanistan and Syria, before becoming an ISIS commander in Libya.

The reports as concerns grow that ISIS fighters dispersed from Sirte could cross the Mediterranean on migrant boats and mount “lone wolf” terror attacks on Italian territory.

Security services have been put on a state of high alert for the peak holiday season and Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has stepped up expulsions of suspected extremist sympathizers.

Late on Saturday, Alfano said he had ordered the deportation of Hosni Hachemi Ben Hassem, a Tunisian imam based in a mosque at Andria in Puglia.

The 49-year-old imam had been cleared of charges of recruiting extremists but Alfano expelled him anyway on the basis of suspected incitement to racial hatred.

The cleric is the ninth imam to be kicked out since the start of 2015 under a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to extremist militancy which Alfano says has reduced the risk of a terror attack on Italian soil.

The centre-right minister has signed a total of 109 expulsion orders since the start of last year, 43 of them in 2016, he said in a statement.

Abu Nassim, whose real name is Moez Ben Abdelkader Fezzani, first arrived in Italy in 1989 to work on building sites.

Suspected of trying to radicalize and recruit other Arab immigrants, he disappeared in 1997 and resurfaced in Pakistan, on his way to join the late Osama bin Laden’s forces in Afghanistan.

He was arrested by US forces in 2001 and held at the Bagram airbase detention facility, which was to become notorious for the torture and killing of inmates.

Abu Nassim was transferred to Italy in 2009 after prosecutors tabled charges of terrorist recruitment related to his previous stay.

He was acquitted in 2012 and deported to Tunisia. He was convicted on appeal the following year, by which time he was already fighting in Syria.

Since 2014, he has commanded ISIS forces around the Libyan port of Sabratha.

Tunisia issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with the March 2015 Bardo Museum attack in Tunis, in which gunmen killed 21 tourists and a policeman.

thelocal.it

aboutcroatia.net

Anti-terror police detained three people for questioning following raids overnight in the Belgian capital Brussels, prosecutors said Friday.

The arrests took place as Belgium remains on high alert following deadly terrorist bombings in March and a machete attack against police officers a week ago.

“Three persons were arrested and taken for questioning,” the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement, adding a judge would decide later Friday if there is enough evidence to keep them in custody.

The three identified as Wassime A., Asma A. and Malika B. were detained following eight raids Wednesday night that were ordered by a judge investigating terrorism cases.

It said no weapons or explosives were found in the six searches in the Brussels neighbourhood of Laeken, or in the one raid in Evere and the other in Anderlecht.

It was not clear whether the raids were linked to an investigation into another “possible threat” the prosecutor’s office mentioned after it declared that bomb alerts on two Scandinavian airlines SAS planes from Oslo and Stockholm were false.

The two planes landed safely in Brussels on Wednesday and searches of the aircraft turned up nothing.

Belgium has been on high alert since suicide bombers struck Brussels airport and a metro station near the European Union headquarters on March 22, killing 32 people.

Those attacks were claimed by the ISIS group and has claimed numerous terror strikes in Europe over the last year.

A Belgian policewoman last Saturday shot and killed a machete-wielding Algerian man who wounded two female colleagues in the city of Charleroi, authorities said.

The ISIS group claimed responsibility for the attack by the man who officials said had been living illegally in Belgium.

abna24.com

The German government has proposed weakening doctor-patient confidentiality laws and has encouraged doctors to report any patients who may show signs of preparing to commit an act of terrorism

German Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière announced Wednesday that the German government would be looking into loosening doctor-patient confidentiality laws in order to allow doctors to alert authorities if they suspect their patient of preparing to commit a terror attack.

The measure is part of a new series of policies designed to better allow authorities to keep track of potential terror suspects long before they are able to carry out attacks, reports Wiener Zeitung.

Mr. de Maizière also put forth a number of other proposals to protect the German people from future acts of terror. The new security measures will include a streamlining of the deportation process for migrants who have committed crimes in Germany.

Currently, most migrants who are deported come from the Western Balkans region, though North Africans have been responsible for large amounts of criminality.  Very few migrants from the Maghreb have been deported due to prohibitive costs and an unwillingness by North African nations to accept the migrants back into their home countries.

The security package also includes calls for more CCTV and surveillance in public areas across the country, and a new Cyber Defence Centre which would allow the retention of data collected by security services to be used in investigations against terror suspects. The internet has been a critical tool for groups like Islamic State who often use encrypted chat programs on mobile phones like “telegram” that allow them to privately speak to each other and plan attacks.

The Interior Minister also wants to see an increase in police personnel of 15,000 until 2020 at the federal and state levels. Dual citizenship may also be dropped as Mr. de Maizière argued that it is an obstacle in the path to integration into German society.

Radical Islamic preachers will also be expelled from Germany and foreign funding of radical mosques will be abolished. Taking a page from the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) platform, the package calls for the ban of the full-face Islamic veil and a stripping of German citizenship for anyone who chooses to fight in a terrorist group, like Islamic State, overseas.

The security package proposal has been welcomed by the union of police officers and its chief Rainer Wendt who said: “These plans are all basically in the right direction.”

Speaking on the loosening of patient confidentiality laws, Mr. Wendt commented: “The medical profession has information that can help the security agencies to identify perpetrators,” adding: “It is therefore correct to speak with the medical profession about a softening of secrecy.”

breitbart.com

Germany’s interior minister on Thursday unveiled proposals to boost security after recent attacks, including making it easier to deport foreigners deemed dangerous and stripping dual nationals who fight for extremist groups of their German citizenship.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere’s plans also include creating several thousand jobs at federal security services over the coming years and making “promoting terrorism” a criminal offense.

Four attacks last month included two carried out by asylum-seekers and claimed by ISIS. Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany won’t be deflected from giving shelter to people who deserve asylum, but also pledged to do “everything humanly possible” to keep the country safe.

“A lot of people … are worried about further attacks. That is understandable,” de Maiziere told reporters. “No one can guarantee absolute security, but we must do what is possible.”

He said Germany will consider joining other countries in screening the public social-media profiles of people being admitted to the country under formal resettlement programs and would start a pilot project to judge its effectiveness.

De Maiziere also wants to strengthen German authorities’ ability to probe the darknet, an area of cyberspace invisible on the open internet.

The minister proposed making it easier to take foreigners who have committed crimes or otherwise are deemed to be dangerous into pre-deportation custody, making “endangering public security” a ground for jailing them. That’s meant to make it easier to ensure people who are obliged to leave the country actually do so.

He said it’s already possible to strip German citizenship from dual nationals who fight for foreign armies, so it’s reasonable to apply the same rule to those who fight for a “terror militia” abroad.

De Maiziere also pointed to ongoing efforts to toughen German and particularly European Union weapons laws.

Two of the attacks in a weeklong period starting July 18 – an ax rampage near Wuerzburg that wounded five and a suicide bombing that injured 15 outside a bar in Ansbach – were the first in Germany to be claimed by ISIS. Both attackers, asylum-seekers who arrived over the past two years, were killed.

In two other attacks – a shooting by a German-Iranian 18-year-old in Munich that claimed 10 lives, including the assailant’s, and the fatal stabbing of a woman by a Syrian asylum-seeker at a restaurant in Reutlingen – the motive is still unclear but Islamic extremism is not suspected.

The attackers in Ansbach and Munich had received psychiatric treatment in the past.

In response, de Maiziere said the government will discuss with doctors ways to “minimize dangers to citizens as far as possible” but stressed that patient confidentiality rules will be upheld.

In Germany, doctors can face a fine or up to a year in prison for breaching patient confidentiality, though existing rules already allow them to do so “in order to safeguard a higher-ranking legally protected interest.”

De Maiziere said he was limiting himself to proposals that could be implemented quickly, and said he considered them “politically reasonable” for the center-left junior party in the conservative Merkel’s governing coalition. De Maiziere is a member of Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats.

He said he hopes that many of the measures can be introduced before a national election expected in September next year.

Some Christian Democrats, keen to bolster the party’s law-and-order credentials ahead of the national election, as well as two state elections next month and three next spring, have called for further measures such as a ban on all-body veils worn by some Muslim women.

De Maiziere made clear, however, that such a ban is “constitutionally problematic” and isn’t in the cards.

“You can’t ban everything that you reject,” he said.

alarabiya.net

Premier Matteo Renzi’s government has nominated Giuseppe Perrone to head up the Italian embassy in Tripoli, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said in an interview with Correiere della Sera on Thursday.

The embassy in Libya has been closed since February 2015 but the government intends to reopen it once security conditions have been met. “Italy is about to give (Premier Fayez al-Sarraj) a great deal, on different levels. I hope the reopening of the embassy… seals a great cooperation effort,” Gentiloni said.

“Our commitment should not come as a surprise: helping to stabilize Libya is a national priority, from security to immigration,” he continued.

However, he denied Italy is engaged in military missions in the north African country. “If we have them in future they will be authorised by parliament,” he said after it emerged that Italian special forces were engaged in training activities in Libya.

ansa.it

Danish police on August 10 arrested a 22-year-old Iranian asylum seeker who threatened to blow himself up on the roof of the building where he was staying.

The police said in a statement the man had wanted to commit suicide over “a broken heart.”

That statement suggested that the incident on the Danish island of Funen was related to a private romantic affair and not intended as a political gesture.

It said the standoff ended when a police negotiator persuaded the man to give up his plan.

Authorities would not comment further about the incident and would not say whether the man was carrying explosives.

rferl.org