European security services in recent weeks have received indications that the extremist group ISIS may have started directing European adherents in Syria and Iraq to launch attacks back in their home countries, a senior European counterterrorism official told CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank.
The official said security agencies in a number of European countries were intensely investigating several groups of returnees from Syria and Iraq, including individuals back on Belgian soil, who they suspect could be plotting terrorist attacks.
Belgian authorities said the raids Thursday, in which two suspects were killed, were part of an operation investigating a cell that included people coming back from Syria and that was about to carry out major terrorist attacks in Belgium.
The European official told Cruickshank that investigators were working around the clock to learn about the potential attack plans of the returned ISIS fighters.
“This threat is not just about Belgium tonight, but it’s also other European countries as well,” Cruickshank said.
What is the nature of the threat?
Beyond what has emerged about the Belgian raids, details remain sketchy.
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European officials have been warning for months about the unprecedented challenge posed by fighters returning from Syria.
More than 3,000 Europeans have left to fight in Syria in recent years. The total number who have returned to Europe is now estimated to be over 500, according to Cruickshank, including 250 who have returned to the United Kingdom, almost 200 to France and around 70 to Belgium.
An indication of the potential threat came last year in the deadly shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium. The suspect in that case is Mehdi Nemmouche, a French citizen who has also been accused of helping to guard ISIS’ Western hostages in Syria.
Nemmouche was arrested in France and extradited to Belgium to face trial over the museum shooting. He has denied the charges.
But the sheer number of Europeans returning from Syria, as well as those suspected of other jihadist activities, makes the task of identifying who is a threat very difficult for law enforcement agencies.
“If there are literally hundreds of people going back to Western Europe, the ability of the police to literally sit on everybody becomes problematic from the standpoint of having the manpower,” said Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.
