Europe faces an increase in terrorist plots, with some suspects posing as refugees and while the conflict between Israel and Hamas galvanizes new actors, as revealed by authorities in various European countries.
In recent months, several European countries have thwarted threats against civilian targets in general and the Jewish community in particular.
In Austria and Bosnia, security forces arrested several groups of armed Afghan and Syrian refugees in December last year, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Tuesday. These individuals, found with weapons and ammunition, including Kalashnikov assault weapons, appeared to have Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe in their sights, heightening alarm about internal security risks.
At the end of last year, in addition, a group of Tajik citizens were arrested after being discovered planning attacks against the Cologne Cathedral (Germany) and St. Stephen’s Cathedral (Vienna) at Christmas. Both churches are filled with hundreds of visitors during the Christmas holidays.
This increase in terrorist activity has not only mobilized law enforcement in Austria and Bosnia, but also in Germany, Italy and Sweden.
Significant operations have been carried out in both Germany and Italy, with the arrest of individuals linked to Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, both classified as terrorist groups by the European Union and the United States. In Italy, specifically, three Palestinians were detained while planning attacks, including suicide attacks, against civilian and military targets on the continent.
The Iranian plot in Sweden
On the other hand, the case of Sweden, where Iran deployed two undercover agents as a refugee couple, reveals an even more sophisticated tactic.
These agents, who were granted asylum two years after arriving in the country, plotted the assassination of Swedish Jewish leaders. Authorities believe the pair were sleeper agents for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an Iranian military group designated as a terrorist organization in the United States, and that they were tasked with the 2021 killings.
“The people they were targeting are considered to represent institutions related to what they consider the enemy state, Israel, even though we were simply Jews living in Sweden,” Saskia Pantell, former director of the Zionist Federation and one of the terrorists’ objectives.
In another case linked to the Persian regime, a German court in December sentenced a German-Iranian man to almost three years in prison for attempting to firebomb a synagogue in the city of Bochum on behalf of the Iranian government in November 2022.
Renewed threats: Hamas and Hezbollah
The role of refugees in these terrorist plots has raised concerns about how extremist groups could be exploiting the migration crisis to infiltrate Europe. This methodology not only recalls the tragedy of the 2015 Paris attacks, carried out in part by terrorists who entered Europe disguised as asylum seekers, but also raises questions about Europe’s ability to protect its borders without compromising its humanitarian commitment.
Furthermore, according to researchers cited by the Wall Street Journal, the various incidents suggest that the terrorist threat in Europe is not only growing, but also comes from new sources, which complicates the work of security agencies.
The wave of attacks that devastated the continent starting in 2015 was largely inspired, and partly directed, by the Islamic State, the Sunni terrorist militia in Syria and Iraq. Now the threat comes not only from Islamic State Khorasan (also known as ISIS-K), the Islamic State’s successor organization based in Afghanistan, but also from Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, including Hezbollah and Hamas.
Late last year, German police launched nationwide raids against Hamas and its affiliates. German and Dutch investigators also detained four people for allegedly receiving orders from Hamas to open a secret weapons cache and attack Jewish targets in Berlin and elsewhere in Western Europe.
German prosecutors claimed that Hamas had buried weapons underground in Europe years ago, but that the suspects, all of them former Hamas members involved in the group’s operations abroad, did not reveal where.
The alert also extends to the financing of these organizations, with evidence of an increase in contributions to groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah from European territory, especially after the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7. This flow of funds, together with a vigorous online campaign and the organization of protests, has allowed these groups to not only survive but thrive, deploying new strategies to attack targets in Europe.
Pantell, who since becoming a target of Iranian terrorists in Sweden has moved to Israel, said Europe has experienced an explosion of anti-Semitism since October 7.
“Here we live with constant air raid alerts,” he said, “but we are not going to return to Sweden because in Israel we feel safer even in an air raid shelter.”
#Maximum #alert #Europe #detection #terrorist #plans #linked #Iran #Hamas #Hezbollah #Diario #Página
