Gilles de Kerchove: 2500 EU terrorists still fighting alongside ISIS in Syria, Iraq
The EU Counterterrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove has declared that 2500 terrorists from the European countries are still fighting alongside ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
He warned- in an interview with the German ‘Die Welt’ newspaper which published excerpts from it- against the return of a lot of those terrorists to Europe.
“The ISIS strategy has changed as it depends on counter-attack based on less logistic model and more attacks,” Kerchove said, calling for a better cooperation with what he called ‘military forces’ deployed in flashpoint area in order get information, such as fingerprints, for identifying ISIS elements by European security authorities.
The Belgian senior EU official underscored the importance of exchanging biometric data in the EU.
On August,8,2016, German research study prepared by Firil Center for Studies said that 90.000 foreign terrorists are fighting alongside ISIS [Its Arabic acronym is Daesh] and Jabhet al-Nusra [Al-Nusra Front] in Syria. “
“The number of terrorists of American and European nationalities reached 21,500, only 8,500 of them have returned to their home countries,” the study added.
The EU countries have witnessed security alert in anticipation of new terror attacks similar to those attacks took place in France, Belgium and Germany.
The terror attacks took place in the said countries as a result of ignoring the repeated warnings that terrorism will hit its supporters.
Basma Qaddour