This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/6626

Many Jihadists, War Criminals, Anti -Semites And Rapists Among Muslim And African Refugees

November 3, 2014

By EMERSON VERMAAT

The usually well informed German newspaper "Bild" reported on October 5, 2014, that Western security services believe that terrorists from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, ISIL or IS) are currently infiltrating Europe by pretending to be asylum seekers. It is "a perfidious terror plan," Bild writes. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees entered Turkey last month. Western security services believe that special ISIS terror commandos consisting of four men each have crossed the Syrian-Turkish border. From Turkey these terrorist commandos are traveling to European countries using forged passports and claiming to be refugees. They plan to carry out terrorist attacks in Europe, notably in Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Bild claims that U.S. intelligence services managed to break the secret communication codes of the ISIS-leadership. From intercepted ISIS communications American intelligence services learned that these terrorists do not want to travel to Western Europe by plane because of usually tight security checks at airports. Bild writes that "German authorities are also quite familiar with this scenario." This refers to the German secret service, the "Bundesnachrichtendienst" (BND) and the German domestic security service, the "Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz" (BfV). The BND closely cooperates with the CIA and the NSA. The BND recently briefed the German parliament on the nefarious role that the Russians played in the shooting down of a Malaysian civilian airliner over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine.

Bild quotes a source from the German Interior Ministry who says that "jihadist terrorism is once again focussing on Germany." This poses a high threat to German security "which at any time can result in (terrorist) attacks that vary in size and intensity." In view of the chaotic situation at the Syrian-Turkish border, it is virtually impossible to detect ISIS-terrorists among the refugees flooding into Turkey, Bild writes. Terrorist experts believe that ISIS wants to expand its war to Europe. Guido Steinberg, for example, writes that German seccurity and intelligence services are not as capable as the U.S. services. They fail to effectively penetrate the ever growing movement of militant Salafists in Germany. Steinberg recently published a highly alarming book on "Al-Qaidas deutsche Kämpfer" (Al-Qaeda's German Warriors). Steinberg writes that five German jihadists were involved in suicide attacks in Iraq in July and August 2014. Terrorists from Europe and the United States are well trained in the nearly forty jihadist training camps in Iraq and Syria. A number of them will return to Europe and the U.S. to stage terrorist attacks there. A number of non-European terrorists will enter Europe as so-called asylum seekers.

It is not the first time that Muslim terrorists abused the asylum system. I still remember a Dutch intelligence report from the late 1990s which claimed that Egyptian, Tunisian and Algerian terrorists applied for asylum in Holland. "The number of radical Muslims increases thanks to the asylum channel," the Dutch Security Service (BVD) warned back in 1998.

Morton Storm's interesting book "Inside Al-Qaeda" reveals a lot about the tactics used by dangerous terrorists who enter Europe as so-called asylum seekers. Storm, a Danish and American agent, infiltrated Al-Qaeda himself and was on very close terms with Anwar Al-Awlaki, the editor of Al-Qaeda's online journal "Inspire" and an extremely dangerous terrorist involved in many terror plots. Awlaki was born in the United States where he radicalized. His parents were Yemenite immigrants. Awlaki frequently visited prostitutes. He later settled in Yemen.

Storm found out that Somali terrorists applied for asylum in Scandinavia. One of them was Mohammed Abdikadir Mohammed (or Ikrimah Al-Mujahir). Fortunately, Ikrimah's application for asylum was rejected by the Norwegians, but they did allow him to travel to other countries. Ikrimah sent Storm an encrypted email in November 2010 indicating Awlaki and he were hatching a plan to send operatives to attack the West. It is only the tip of the iceberg.

Quite a number of first- and second-generation Muslim immigrants and refugees in Europe and the United States return to their home countries to participate in the holy war or jihad. Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, also known as Mullah Krekar, applied for asylum in Norway in the early 1990s. This radical Kurd from northern Iraq founded his own terror organization: Ansar Al-Islam. He also cooperated with Al-Qaeda. "Suicide is the biggest Jihad for Islam," he once said. Thousands of European Muslims traveled to Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to join extremely violent jihadist groups. This year in Britain alone 218 radical Muslims were arrested who planned to travel to Syria or Iraq or who were suspected of being involved in terrorism. Last October, for example, 21-year-old Tariq Hassane was arrested in the London suburb of Ladbroke Grove – a hotbed of islamic extremism. He and four of his friends swore allegiance to ISIS and probably planned a terrorist attack in Britain or wanted to travel Syria to join the jihadists there. He already possessed a pistol.

Some Syrian immigrants and asylum seekers in who arrived in Spain and Germany in the 1980s later played an important role in Al-Qaeda. The most important examples are Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas (Abu Dahdah) and Mustafa bin Abd Al-Qadir Setmarian Nasar (Abu Musab Al-Suri) in Spain and Mamoun Darkazanli and Mohammed Haydar Zammar in Germany.

A Syrian radical Muslim named Mohammed Bassem Redouan Al-Issa(r) played an important role in the so-called "Hofstad Group," a terrorist network in the Netherlands. His application for asylum failed, though. He was the mentor of Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan citizen who killed Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh on November 2, 2004, ten years ago almost to the day. Al-Issa traveled to Turkey (via Brussels) on the very day van Gogh was brutally murdered. He probably knew what would happen on that day. Once in Turkey, Al-Issa returned to his home country Syria – a fatal decision. He was arrested and ended up in prison. He is probably no longer alive.

Iran and Syria also infiltrate Muslim immigrant communities in Europe by sending secret agents to, for example, Germany, Austria, Holland and Britain. This has been reported by the Dutch, German and British security services.

War criminals and rapists

The Dutch newspaper "Trouw" recentely reported there are war criminals among the many Syrian refugees who apply for asylum in the Netherlands. These war criminals cannot be expelled, though. In the first six months of 2014, five Syrians have not been granted asylum because the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice suspects that they committed war crimes in Syria. It is only the tip of the iceberg.

There are also quite a lot of African and Afghan war criminals who applied for asylum in the past – often successfully. About 180 former asylum seekers were linked to war crimes, and they did not get asylum or their asylum status was revoked. Only ten of them could be deported from the Netherlands. About sixty percent of those 180 suspected war criminals are Afghans. Other suspected war criminals come from Syria, Libya, Rwanda, Congo and Nigeria.

It is not very different in other European countries. In Belgium, for example, there are at least ninety cases of suspected war criminals from Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Iraq and Turkey. Again, it is only the tip of the iceberg – the justice system simply cannot cope with this huge problem. These figures are from 2012. In 2013 and 2014 there was a rapid increase of suspected Syrian war criminals who applied for asylum in Belgium and Germany.

Most African, Afghan, Syrian and Iraqi war criminals were and still are involved in torture, mass killings and rape. Child soldiers from Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria committed horrendous crimes – yet a number of them did apply for asylum in Europe.

Raping women is a huge problem in South-Africa, Congo, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. Not only do the victims apply for asylum in Europe, also many perpetrators of cruelties and killings do so.

Too many immigrants from Africa and the Muslim world continue to commit crimes once they settle in a European country. In Britain, for example, Pakistani and Iraqi gangs raped large numbers of young British girls. In Rotherham/Rochdale at least 1400 British girls, some of them as young as 11, were sexually abused by Pakistani males. The police failed to act – for the sake of domestic peace and quiet and "multiculturalism." "In the name of supposed tolerance the state has ended up colluding with savage intolerance in our midst," writes British journalist Leo McKinstry.

British girls are systematically being targeted by men from Pakistan and Bangladesh. The most important Rochdale gang leader was a man named Shabir Ahmed who is currently in jail.

In Sheffield Iraqi gangs similary raped quite a lot of British girls and the police did not intervene either. Sham or bogus marriages are common in Britain– as many as 10,000 a year. "An imam accused of conducting nearly 600 sham marriages between Muslim men and European brides has walked free from court," the "Daily Mail" reported on October 30, 2014. "A judge ordered charges against Mohammed Mattar to be dropped after paperwork blunders meant that the case was not ready on time"

Anti-Semitism

Many immigrants and asylum seekers from North Africa, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are anti-Semites. In Britain, for example, a survey conducted in 2007 found that only 22 percent of British Muslims agreed that the Holocaust happened "as history teaches." "The rest were as follows: it has been exaggerated (17 percent), never heard of it (23 percent), no opinion (24 percent), didn't happen (2 percent), don't know (6 percent)." This survey, quoted by Anthony Julius in a thorough study on Anti-Semitism in England, shows that "teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims." Julius also quotes the London "Times" from September 7, 2007. This newspaper "reported that almost half of Britain's mosques are under the control of the Deobandi sect, one of whose leading imams, Riyadh hul Haq, ‘supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus.'"

A recent academic study in Germany shows a similar trend. Not so very few young Muslims in Berlin, Paris and London tend to doubt the historical truth of the Holocaust or they believe in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories or they claim that the suffering of the Palestinians can be compared to the suffering of the Jews during the Second World War. Some young Muslims even claim that Hitler was right. "I like Hitler," a young British Bangladeshi Muslim said. He expressed sympathy for Hitler because this man had killed so many Jews.

The failure of Italy's "Mare Nostrum" operation

At least 150,000 African and Muslim refugees crossed the Mediterranean Sea between early January and the end of October 2014. That is about 400 a day, an unprecedented number! Many of them were rescued by the Italian navy. The liberal Italian government announced in October 2013 that the navy and the coast guard were to rescue boat refugees far away from Italy's territorial waters – operation "Mare Nostrum." The British government believes that this policy was counterproductive. The London-based newspaper "The Guardian" reported: "British policy was quietly spelled out in a recent House of Lords written answer by the new British Foreign Office minister, Lady Anelay: "We do not support planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean," she said, adding that the government believed there was "an unintended ‘pull factor', encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more and unnecessary deaths."

"Anelay said: "The government believes that the most effective way to prevent refugees and migrants attempting this dangerous crossing is to focus our attention on the countries of origin and transit, as well as taking steps to fight the people smugglers who wilfully put lives at risk by packing migrants into unseaworthy boats."

These observations are correct. It is indeed a fact that powerful criminal migrant trafficking maffias profited hugely from Italy's controversial "Mare Nostrum" operation. These ruthless criminals encouraged more than 150,000 refugees to take too many risks. At least three thousand people were drowned in just one year.

On November 1, Mare Nostrum was replaced by the much more limited "Joint Operation Triton" led by "Frontex," the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at External Borders of the Member States of the European Union. Liberal open border policies are bound to fail, both in the United States and Europe.

Emerson Vermaat is an investigative reporter in the Netherlands. Website: emersonvermaat.com.

Sources:

Bild am Sonntag, October 4, 2014 ("Tarnen sich ISIS-Teroristen als Flüchtlinge?")

Guido Steinberg, "Weitgehend Schutzlos," Der Spiegel, September 29, 2014, p. 32.

Guido Steinberg, Al-Qaidas deutsche Kämpfer. Die Globaliserung des islamischen Terrorismus (Hamburg: Edition Körber-Stiftung, October 2014), p. 334-370. Page 369: "Allein in July und August wurden in schneller Folge fünf aus Deutschland stammende Kämpfer bei Selbstmordanschlägen im Irak eingesetzt."

Bill Roggio and Caleb Weiss, Jihadist training camps proliferate in Iraq and Syria, Long War Journal, October 24, 2014.

Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD), De politieke islam in Nederland (The Hague: May 1998), p. 17, 18. The BVD (Dutch Domestic Security Service) is today's AIVD.

Morton Storm, Agent Storm. My Life Inside Al-Qaeda (London/New York: Viking/Penguin Books, 2014), p. 96 (Awlaki's encounters with American prostitutes), p. 175, 176 (Somali terrorist Ikrimah applying for asylum in Norway), p. 361 (Ikrima's email to Morton Storm). There is also a color photograph of Ikrimah while he was in Norway.

Twee Vandaag (Dutch TV), February 20, 2003. Mullah Krekar: "Suicide is the biggest Jihad for Islam."

El País (Madrid), October 21, 2014, p. 1, 3 ("Un nido de la yihad en el centro de Londres").

Emerson Vermaat, Nederlandse Jihad. Het proces tegen de Hofstadgroep (Soesterberg, Netherlands: Uitgeverij Aspekt, 2006), p. 114, 127, 149, 283 (Al-Issa). A detailed account of the Hofstad Group Trial in the Netherlands.

Gazet van Antwerpen (Antwerp), February 8, 2012 ("In België lopen 90 strafonderzoeken tegen oorlogsmisdadigers"). "Turtelboom (Justice Minister) gaf toe dat momenteel slechts 8 onderzoekers met oorlogsmisdaden en genocides bezig zijn. Ze vindt dat zelf wat weinig, gezien de complexiteit van deze dossiers…'

Leo McKinstry, Multiculturalism is to Blame for the Rotherham Child Sex Abuse Scandal, Daily Express (London), August 28, 2014.

Claire Ellicott and Jack Doyle, New Sham Marriage Farce, Daily Mail (London), October 30, 2014, p. 4, 5.

Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora. A History of Anti-Semitism in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 535, p. 763, footnote 25 (Holocaust denial and British Muslims), p. 540 (Riyadh ul Haq).

Günther Jikeli, Wahrnemungen des Holocaust unter jungen Muslimen in Berlin, Paris and London, in: Günther Jikeli, Kim Robin Stoller, Joëlle Allouche-Benayoun (Eds.), Umstrittene Geschichte. Ansichten zum Holocaust unter Muslimen im internationalen Vergleich (Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2013), p. 185-226.

The Guardian (London), October 27, 2014 ("UK axes support for Mediterranian migrant rescue operation").

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/6626