Turkish officials have accused European governments of attempting to export their Islamic extremist problem to Syria, saying the EU has failed to secure its own borders or abide by pledges to share intelligence and cooperate in fighting the jihadist threat.
The failures were outlined by Turkish officials to the Guardian through several documented instances of foreign fighters leaving Europe while travelling on passports registered on Interpol watchlists, arriving from European airports with luggage containing weapons and ammunition, and being freed after being deported from Turkey despite warnings that they have links to foreign fighter networks.
“We were suspicious that the reason they want these people to come is because they don’t want them in their own countries,” a senior Turkish security official told the Guardian. “I think they were so lazy and so unprepared and they kept postponing looking into this until it became chronic.”
The conversations with Turkish officials took place before the latest Isis-claimed terror attacks in Brussels, but those bombings and the attacks in Paris last November brought into stark relief Europe’s failings in tackling the threat from Europeans intent on travelling to Syria or Iraq to fight with Isis and then returned to carry out atrocities at home.
On Wednesday the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, one of the bombers at Brussels Zaventem airport, had been detained in Gaziantep in June of last year over suspicions that he intended to travel to Syria as a foreign fighter. Though Belgian authorities were informed of his arrest, they told Turkey that they had no evidence that he had terrorism links and did not request his extradition. He was deported to the Netherlands before returning to Belgium.
No comments:
Post a Comment