Posted: 11/11/2015 at 10:08am
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Al Qaeda Terror Boss Discovered On Migrant Boat, Authorities ‘Tried To Hide News’Breitbart.com/london
Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images by Nick Hallett9 Nov 2015
A convicted terrorist has been caught trying to smuggle
himself into Europe by posing as an asylum seeker, in a stark event
proving correct those who warned of terrorists taking advantage of the
European Union’s lax border controls.
Ben Nasr Mehdi, a Tunisian who was first arrested in Italy in 2007
and sentenced to seven years imprisonment for plotting terror attacks
with an Islamic State-linked group, was caught trying to re-enter the
country last month.
Authorities discovered him among 200 migrants who were rescued at sea
and taken to the island of Lampedusa. Although he gave a false name,
migration officers identified him through finger print records, the Independent reports.
German channel n-tv claims
the Italian government initially tried to hide the story to avoid
“panic” and “scare tactics”. The news did not emerge until several days
after Mehdi had been detained last week.
Mehdi was then interrogated for several days before being deported back to Tunisia, where he was handed over to local police.
The revelation will likely add to fears that Islamist terrorists are using the migrant crisis as a means to enter Europe.
In April, UKIP leader Nigel Farage told the European Parliament
that terrorists would try to exploit the crisis. He told MEPs: “When
ISIS say they want to flood our continent with half a million Islamic
extremists they mean it, and there is nothing in [the Common European
Asylum Policy] that will stop them.
“I fear we face a direct threat to our civilisation if we allow large numbers of people from that war torn region into Europe.”
The following month, Italian authorities arrested Abdel Majid Touil,
a Moroccan accused of being involved in a terror attack on the Bardo
museum in Tunisia. He had smuggled himself into Italy on a migrant boat
in February.
Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has until now insisted
there is no evidence that Islamist terrorists are smuggling themselves
into the country among the thousands of migrants, but his ministry has
admitted that Ben Nasr Mehdi is exceptionally dangerous.
When police arrested him in 2007, they found explosive detonators,
poisons and guerrilla warfare manuals. Prosecutors said he had been part
of a group that was setting up militant cells that had recruited
potential suicide bombers.
Authorities intercepted phone calls in which he indicated he had
supplied instructions and contacts to terrorists in Damascus, thus
marking him out as a senior operative.
European leaders are becoming increasingly worried about the
potential terror threat from the migrant crisis. Last month, German
Interior Minister Thomas de Mazičre said his country had become a “focus of international terrorism” thanks to migration. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has also expressed similar fears.
Link> http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/09/al-qaeda-terror-b oss-discovered-on-migrant-boat-authorities-tried-to-hide-new s/
Edited by News Room on 11/11/2015 at 10:12am
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