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Italy navy warns ‘terrorists’ could be crossing in migrant boats
AFP (via Daily Times of Pakistan) ^ | 4 July 2014 | AFP

Posted on 07/03/2014 5:32:53 PM PDT by tellw

ROME: The head of Italy’s navy warned Thursday that terrorists could be using migrant boats to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, amid increased concern among intelligence services of possible attacks by extremists.

“There’s a risk not only of massive illegal immigration, but also of terrorist infiltrations,” the commander in chief of the Italian navy, Luigi Binelli Mantelli, told La Stampa.

He said that police boarding migrant boats intercepted by the navy were trained in special interrogation techniques designed to root out traffickers and potential “terrorists”.

“There are indicators which confirm contacts between traffickers (who organise the boats) and terrorists,” he said.

Italy’s “Mare Nostrum” (“Our Sea”) operation is not just tasked with rescuing immigrants — thousands of whom have drowned on the perilous crossing — but is also “monitoring the sea in a situation of international crisis”, he said.

More than 66,500 migrants have arrived in Italy from North Africa this year so far, from where most hope to reach other destinations in Europe.

The majority come from Eritrea, Syria, Somalia and Mali. As well as “operative terrorists”, there are “latent terrorists... who present themselves as asylum seekers”, Binelli Mantelli said.

Such threats may come from “cultures soaked in fundamentalism, like Mali”, while “in Somalia there is an Al Qaeda movement which is stronger and more dangerous than in Afghanistan,” he said.

While he said over 180 traffickers had been arrested since the operation began last October, Binelli Mantelli did not say whether anyone had been arrested on suspicion of “terrorist” activities.

Between 60 to 70 percent of those arriving by boat were asylum seekers escaping warzones, “often engineers, doctors, lawyers... men, women and children fleeing for their lives”, while the rest were economic migrants, he said.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 07/03/2014 5:32:53 PM PDT by tellw
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To: tellw
Flashback:

Migrants sit in a boat during a rescue operation by the Italian navy off the coast of Sicily on Nov. 28. Italy is looking to revamp the way it handles the hundreds of thousands of migrants who arrive annually. Source: NPR.

2 posted on 07/03/2014 5:37:46 PM PDT by tellw
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To: tellw

The West will go down in the Islamic history books as one of their easiest conquests.


3 posted on 07/03/2014 5:40:35 PM PDT by SpaceBar
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To: tellw

This is what Father Jonathan Morris was saying yesterday on Fox News.

SCARY


4 posted on 07/03/2014 5:43:57 PM PDT by SilvieWaldorfMD (A Realistically Really Real Housewife)
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To: SpaceBar

It really is not even a conquest. The West just has not realized what has been and is happening and perhaps because of white guilt or the guilt from being successful simply does not care about the future. Leftist secular education
has also been a factor.


5 posted on 07/03/2014 5:44:38 PM PDT by Maine Mariner
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To: tellw

Sink their boats and they’ll quit coming.


6 posted on 07/03/2014 5:52:05 PM PDT by Comment Not Approved (When bureaucrats outlaw hunting, outlaws will hunt bureaucrats.)
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