Brussels, 07/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - Around 650 fighters of European origin (including 120 French fighters) are engaged in the fighting in Syria - some of them in the name of jihad.
This is what EU home affairs ministers noted, on Friday 7 June, at the end of a discussion on “foreign fighters”. New in terms of its scale, this phenomenon has not been observed to the same extent in previous conflicts, like the war in Mali or Afghanistan, stressed French Minister for the Interior Manuel Valls during a press conference.
France and Belgium are particularly concerned and have promised to strengthen their cooperation by giving very concrete and operational follow-up to the ministerial discussion which was fuelled by a note from the EU counter terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove (see EUROPE 10860). The ministers spoke, amongst other things, of the need to exchange more information on this phenomenon and on the potential terrorist risks when these fighters return to Europe. The ministers also want to be able to analyse the messages of radicalisation better - messages that are put on the internet and social networks, and to have new tools for tracking “cyber-jihadism”, Valls stated.
Spain put forward a proposal on this. The European Commission is also concerned, and proposed helping the efforts of the member states in this domain and making its tools available to them - like the European network for the prevention of radicalisation, the goal of which is to detect early signs of radicalism. (SP/transl.fl)