Anti-Terror in Europe

Anti-Terror raid all over Europe.

The RT coverage seems to toe the general line -  with sympathetic stories of (presumably) Jews travelling to the occupied territories  for training in how to use a gun and threats against "Je suis Charlie" businesses.

Still, people like Peter Lavelle remain on track.

US and UK in joint anti-terror move

Radio NZ,
17 January, 2015


Britain and the US are to share expertise on preventing radicalism and tackling domestic "violent extremism".

Prime Minister David Cameron announced the move following talks with President Barack Obama at the White House, warning that they both faced a "poisonous and fanatical ideology".

US President Barack Obama and Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron.

Photo: AFP

The taskforce will report back to the two leaders within six months, the BBC reported.

Mr Cameron also said Britain would deploy more unarmed drones to help ground forces tackle Islamic State.

Mr Cameron is on a two-day visit to Washington for talks with President Obama, likely to be his final Washington visit before the UK general election in May.

At a press conference in the White House, Mr Obama hailed Mr Cameron as a "great friend" while the British prime minister said the US was a "kindred spirit".

The talks between the two leaders came a week after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris which killed 17 people.

Concerns over additional attacks by Islamic extremists intensified on Thursday, after two people were killed during a targeted anti-terror raid by police in Belgium, to pre-empt what officials there called a major impending attack.

UK police have said there is "heightened concern" about the risk to the UK's Jewish communities in the wake of last week's attacks and are considering stepping up patrols in certain areas.

At a press conference in the White House, Mr Cameron said it was a "sensible, precautionary" measure to take to "reassure those communities".

Mr Cameron said: "We face a poisonous and fanatical ideology that wants to pervert one of the world's major religions, Islam, and create conflict, terror and death.

"With our allies we will confront it wherever it appears."

President Obama said the US, UK and its allies were "working seamlessly to prevent attacks and defeat these terrorist networks".

Asked whether an attack was "imminent" in Britain, Mr Cameron said the terror threat level, set independently by the Joint Terrorism Assessment Centre, was currently at "severe" - meaning an attack is "highly likely".

He warned that the fight against terrorism "is going to be a long, patient and hard struggle" but added that he was "quite convinced we will overcome it" due to the strength of the West's values.

However, he stressed that "everyone" had a role to play in keeping communities safe, warning: "You cannot simply rely on policing and security."

As the press conference took place, it emerged that counter-terrorism officers have arrested an 18-year-old woman at Stansted Airport on suspicion of terrorism offences.

The prime minister also announced that the UK would send an additional 1,000 troops to take part in NATO military exercises in the Baltic states and eastern Europe amid heightened tensions in the region following Russia's conflict with Ukraine.

Commenting on the announcement, UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said the extra troops would provide "additional reassurance" and underlined the UK's commitment to its allies.

Before the talks at the White House, which lasted just over an hour, it was announced that the UK and US are to carry out "war game" cyber attacks on each other as part of a new joint defence against online criminals.

Belgian terror cell planned to kill police

Radio NZ,
17 January, 2015

In Belgium, a suspected jihadist group targeted in a major anti-terror raid on Thursday had been planning to kill policemen in the street and at police stations, Belgian prosecutors say.

The planned attacks were imminent, they said, adding that two suspects shot dead in Verviers during the raids were still being identified.

Thirteen suspects have been arrested, while two more were arrested in France.

Belgium's government has announced tough new measures to tackle terrorism.

Belgian police patrol the Jewish quarter in Antwerp. Photo: AFP

Police in France meanwhile have arrested a dozen people suspected of helping the Islamist militant gunmen responsible for last week's killings in Paris amid a series of anti-terror raids across Europe.

An official says the arrests in the region south of Paris were in connection with suspected "logistical support" for the shooting.

Seventeen victims and the three attackers died in three days of violence that began with an attack on the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

The American secretary of state, John Kerry, is in Paris and is due to have talks with President Francois Hollande today.

Europe on alert

Hundreds of German police meanwhile raided alleged Islamist sites in Berlin, arresting two men suspected of being part of a group planning to carry out an attack in Syria.

The raids fuelled fears about the thousands of young Europeans thought to have gone to fight with the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda-linked groups in the Middle East before coming home to launch attacks.

The group in Blegium was on the verge of carrying out terrorist attacks to kill police officers on public roads and in police stations," Belgian federal prosecutors' spokesman Eric Van der Sijpt told a news conference about the raids overnight.

The group, recently returned from Syria, had Kalashnikov assault rifles, 
explosives, ammunition and communications equipment, along with police uniforms, he said.

Prime Minister Charles Michel said he was ready to call up the army to ensure security and raised Belgium's terror alert to three on a scale of our.

The European Commission stepped up security at its headquarters in Brussels as a "precaution", a spokeswoman said.

Jewish schools in Brussels and the port city of Antwerp closed Friday. The raid comes less than a year after four people were shot dead in an attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels. A Frenchman who fought in Syria has been charged with the murders.

Verviers's Mayor Marc Elsen gives a press conference at the city's town hall.  Photo: AFP

The unrest across Europe has fuelled fears of tensions between communities, but in Verviers, a faded industrial town near the German border, residents said they would stay united.

Belgium has one of the largest number of extremists who have returned from Syria relative to its population, with a large Muslim community that suffers from high unemployment and disenfranchisement.

With France still reeling from the attacks which targeted its cherished traditions of free speech, US Secretary of State John Kerry laid wreaths on Friday at both Charlie Hebdo offices and the Jewish supermarket during a visit to Paris.

The magazine inflamed Muslims in many countries by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

French President Francois Hollande meanwhile urged the international community to offer a "firm" and "collective" response to the attacks, which drew 1.5 million people into the streets in Paris in their wake along with dozens of world leaders, although the US was not among them.

International anger over Charlie Hebdo's printing of a new image of Mohammed in its sold-out comeback issue this week continued to rage, with protesters clashing with police outside the French consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi. AFP/BBC

Italy, US 'Aggressively Monitored' Muslims According to WikiLeaks Cables

Sputnik News,

16 January, 2015

The entire Muslim population of Italy has been "closely monitored" while some 2,000 Muslims have been "aggressively monitored", according to WikiLeaks cables dated from 2005 and classified by the then-US Ambassador to Italy Ronald Spogli.

MOSCOW, January 16 (Sputnik), Daria Chernyshova — The documents came to Sputnik news agency's attention in the wake of the spike in Islamophobia across Europe following last week's terrorist attack in Paris.

"Muslims comprise approximately two percent of the [Italian] population. The majority are moderates; only five percent of Muslims in Italy attend mosque; and many are itinerant workers… The Italian Government closely monitors this community and expels those who preach violence," the cable dated September 26, 2005 says.

Another document from December 7, 2005, also classified by Ronald Spogli, quotes the then-Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu as saying that the Muslim community in Italy is different from those in France and other European countries, much smaller and more diffuse, with most being economic migrants.

"Still, there will always be some prone to extremism, but the minister estimated these counted for no more than three percent of the community in Italy. The [Muslim] advisory council was designed to reach out to the other 97 percent. The three percent were aggressively monitored — mosques, schools, bakeries, butcher shops, meeting places," the document sates. "This meant that perhaps 2,000 had been identified and put under watch."

The document based on a private informal lunch at the US Ambassador's residence and involving Spogli, Pisanu and Italy's Chief of Police Giovanni De Gennaro, also outlines that some 200 Muslims were expelled from Italy on suspicion of extremism in the years preceding 2005.

The lunch discussions, all in Italian, focused on security issues relating to the 2006 Turin Olympics, Muslim outreach, terrorist financing and data-sharing efforts.

According to the WikiLeaks cables, Giuseppe Pisanu "takes obvious pride in his initiative for outreach to the Muslim community in Italy."

"At the same time, he [Pisanu] and the police chief were unambiguously firm in their ongoing efforts to monitor, and if need be, expel any individuals in the community advocating violence or extremism," the classified document states.

An official representative of WikiLeaks has confirmed that the documents are authentic.

Until a decade ago, Italy had been primarily a country of emigrants, but its immigrant population has been on the rise and in 2012 migrants represented 7.4 percent of the Italian population, according to the Italian National Office Against Racial Discrimination (UNAR).

Italy's Muslim Advisory Council was set up "to tackle [the] practical problems of integration," by addressing practical and social issues, including the issuance of work permits and religious education in schools.

The United States has been conducting a so-called Muslim Outreach program in Italy, led by Milan's Consulate General. The mission "is utilizing a combination of our U.S. Speakers and Exchange programs together with Embassy resources to promote our agenda," according to a 2007 cable "Muslim Outreach Strategy — The Next Level."

According to a Pew Research survey conducted last spring, Italians are more critical toward Muslims compared to other European nations – 63 percent of the population holds unfavorable views of the Muslim population. While in France and Germany, which host Europe's largest Muslim communities, the tendency is different, with 72 and 78 percent of the population respectively holding favorable views of the Muslim community.

The United States has been conducting so-called Muslim Outreach programs across Europe, including in Spain, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, with the goal of countering the belief that Washington is at war with Islam, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.

"… the two overarching goals of U.S. engagement with Europe's Muslims: countering the widespread conviction that the U.S. is somehow "at war" with Islam, and initiating a constructive dialogue about Muslim integration in European societies aimed at sharing America's best practices with regard to providing equal opportunity to disadvantaged, racially distinct minorities," the sensitive document from 2007 quotes US senior advisor to the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs Farah Pandith as saying.

Catherine Burn, Deputy Commissioner of the Specialist Operations speaks to the media

This document follows Farah Pandith's July 25-26, 2007 meetings with officials from the French prime minister's office, the foreign ministry, the interior ministry, politicians, religious leaders, academics, businessmen and community activists.

Another 2007 document, entitled "Muslim Outreach Strategy – The Next Level" states that "Italy represents an opportunity for U.S. interests in promoting the integration of moderate Muslims in a Western European democracy."

In August 2005, the United States established an Integration Issues Working Group (IIWG) "to coordinate outreach and reporting activities related to the Dutch Muslim community." The 2006 cable further notes, that in accordance with Washington's guidance, the mission "made engaging with the Dutch Muslim community a top priority." While the primary goal was stated as "improving the image of the United States and U.S. policies among the increasingly influential — and largely anti-American — Dutch Muslim community."

At the same time, the cables highlight that the US-led Muslim Outreach programs target both legal and illegal citizens.

"We are building our information base about Italy's diverse Muslim community to determine the best ways of stimulating a dialogue with them," the 2005 cable classified by the-then US Ambassador to Italy Ronald Spogli says. "We do not believe that political or public diplomacy outreach programs are an effective means to reach Muslim extremists themselves; this task is best left to other agencies with other tools."

German Muslims Not Considered Properly German: Study

An official representative of WikiLeaks has confirmed that the documents are authentic.

Currently, Europe is going through a spike in Islamophobia as a reaction to the killing of 17 people in last week's attacks in Paris, targeting the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket.

Germany's Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (Pegida) movement has gained momentum following the attacks and gathered thousands of people at anti-Islamization rallies across Europe. The movement now has branches in several European countries, including Spain, Switzerland, France and the United Kingdom.

Those who oppose Pegida and accuse it of right-wing extremism have conducted counter-marches, attracting tens of thousands of people.

Diffused nature of terror cells makes attack prevention 'extremely' hard – Europol

RT,

16 January, 2015

The head of EU police agency Europol, Rob Wainwright, says it is becoming extremely difficult to foil terror attacks due to the large number of radicalized Muslim extremists in Europe, their lack of command structure, and their growing sophistication.

"The scale of the problem, the diffuse nature of the network, the scale of the people involved make this extremely difficult for even very well-functioning counterterrorist agencies such as we have in France to stop every attack," Wainwright said in an interview to AP.

"Official" terror groups headed by a leader are often replaced by numerous independent or semi-independent terrorists who act on their own. It is very difficult to track them, he explained, adding that at least 2,500 and perhaps up to 5,000 Europeans are suspected to have joined militants in Syria and Iraq.

READ MORE: Up to 5,000 EU nationals pose terror threat – Europol

"The sheer numbers of people involved, the way in which they've been radicalized on the Internet, radicalized by their engagement in the conflict in Syria and Iraq, makes this extremely difficult for the police to contain it in a complete way," he said. "That's the real problem I think that the intelligence community faces right now."

Policemen and forensic police work under the rain in a marked out perimeter in Colline street in Verviers, eastern Belgium, on January 15, 2015, after two men were reportedly killed during an anti-terrorist operation. (AFP Photo / John Thys)

According to Wainwright, European police agencies need to have closer cooperation with each other and Europol in order to prevent possible attacks. He said that Belgian police had cooperated with Europol before the Thursday anti-terrorist operation in Verviers, Belgium, where an imminent attack was prevented. 

Thirteen people were arrested in the country; five of them were charged with “participating in the activities of a terrorist group” on Friday.

READ MORE: EU anti-terror alert: 2 suspects killed, 1 captured in Belgium raid

"We have to make sure therefore that we can work together in a better way across Europe," he said.

The series of terror acts in Europe started on January 7, after the deadly assault on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris. EU counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove has warned there is a risk of new attacks in Europe. Europol said the most likely targets are Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK.

READ MORE: Paris attacks aftermath: Europe on high alert amid terror threats

Europol, based in The Hague, Netherlands, is the European Union's law enforcement agency with a staff of 800 people. Its main goal is to “help achieve a safer Europe for the benefit of all EU citizens,”according to its webpage.

The agency has no executive powers, but works to improve the effectiveness and cooperation between the competent authorities of the member states by means of sharing intelligence in order to prevent and combat serious international organized crime. Europol supports European national agencies with information exchange, intelligence analysis, expertise, and training.

CrossTalk: Turing Right

In the wake of the tragedy in Paris, what are the prospects for Europe’s right-wing populist political parties? There can be no doubt the issues of immigration and policies dealing with terrorism will remain high on the agenda. But what if the entire pan-European project is a failure?

CrossTalking with Stephen Haseler, John Laughland and John Weeks