ISIS sending its militants into Europe via Mediterranean Sea

Europe, Middle East, News May 17, 2015 , by IRIA No Comments

According to a report, ISIS terrorist group is sending its militants into Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.

The state-funded BBC on Sunday quoted a Libyan government adviser, Abdul Basit Haroun, as saying that ISIS uses migrant boats to send its members into Europe “as the European police don’t know who is from ISIS and who is a normal refugee.”

Haroun added that the ISIS militants control some boat owners and permit them to continue their operations only after the latter pay the extremists 50 percent of their income from each ship.

The Libyan official suggested that the ISIS sends its members to Europe for future attacks in the continent.

The report comes against the backdrop of warnings by European authorities that foreign militants operating in countries like Syria will use their combat skills against their countries upon returning home.

According to an October 2014 report by the UN Security Council, 15,000 foreigners have flocked to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the ISIS or other terrorist groups.

In an earlier development, a report released by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime said that terrorist groups, including ISIS, are making huge sums of money out of the human trafficking trade, which smuggles boatloads of people from the Libyan coast across the Mediterranean into Europe.

The report estimates that the illegal trade generates between $255 million and $323 million each year.

“The value of this trade dwarfs any existing trafficking and smuggling businesses in the region, and has particularly strengthened groups with a terrorist agenda, including the ISIS,” the report said.

The ISIS terrorists, who are mainly operating in Syria and Iraq, have set up strongholds in some coastal areas of the North African country of Libya.