EU Security Commissioner Julian King has a warning for European governments: expect jihadists to come among those flying from the fall of Mosul. The influx is “a serious threat that we must prepare ourselves for,” according to King, who trained in international security and then spent much of his career as a United Kingdom diplomat dealing with Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Of special concern to him were the 2,500 Islamic State (ISIS) fighters who are estimated to have come from European nations to begin with, as they would have all the necessary documents to return without legal difficulty. Should Mosul fall, some number of its defenders will likely slip back to Europe, and the history of the conflict suggests that they would then carry out terrorist attacks at home. Hundreds of such fighters havealready come back, dwarfing the European security agencies’ capacities to deal with the threat that they pose. The figure may rise above a thousand according to some estimates of the number of actual ISIS soldiers who have returned to infiltrate Europe. – READ MORE
