US Counter Terrorism Center: Increasing Number of Terrorists from US, Europe Pour into Syria

COLORADO- An increasing number of fighters from Europe and the United States are heading for Syria to join armed groups in the fight against the Syrian government, says director of the US government’s National Counter Terrorism Center.

Press TV quoted Matthew Olsen , Director of Center, as saying at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspin, Colorado, on Friday, that “Syria has become really the predominant jihadist battlefield in the world.”.

“We see foreign fighters going from Western Europe and in a small number of cases, from the United States to Syria to fight for the opposition,” he added.

Olsen had earlier warned that these fighters will finally return to the US and Europe to pose a great threat in the West.

“The concern going forward from a threat perspective is there are individuals traveling to Syria, becoming further radicalized, becoming trained and then returning as part of really a global jihadist movement to Western Europe and, potentially, to the United States,” Olsen said on July 18.

Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s counter-terrorism coordinator, another speaker at the forum, said that about 600 fighters have gone to Syria from Europe, adding that the number will grow to thousands if the ones from the Balkans and North Africa are counted.

“The scale of this is completely different from what we’ve experienced in the past with Afghanistan, Pakistan, with Yemen and Somalia,” de Kerchove said.

H. Mustafa