The current migrant and refugee crisis facing Europe has led to an increase in the threat of terror, with reports of ISIL using the crisis to send terrorists, posing as refugees. Yet the most significant threat is from right-wing groups within Europe.
Police
in Norway have said the internal security risk has increased as a
result of the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe, but that it is
right-wing groups that pose the biggest threat, in an assessment similar
to other countries across Europe.
Benedicte Bjørnland, head of the Norwegian Police Security Service
(PST), posted on its website an announcement saying the major threat was
from right-wing extremist environments, similar to those exposed by the
PST Swedish counterpart Säpo.
She said the current crisis is expected to have: "adverse consequences for threats linked to the extreme-right scene. This is because opposition to immigration is one of the most important issues and an important mobilizing factor for the groups.
"There is also a potential for far-left extremist groups in Norway
can muster around issues related to the refugee crisis. An escalation
of the conflict with the extreme right could lead to counter-reactions
and violent clashes between right and left-wing extremists," she said.
She denied reports of evidence of ISIL infiltrating the refugees to carry out terror plots, saying the threat was more likely to be internal.
Her comments come a day after European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said that unless the migrant crisis in Europe was addressed properly there would be a surge of right-wing extremism across the continent.
Timmermans also said that there needed to be better protection of the
European Union's borders to deal with the hundreds of thousands
of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
"We have to make sure that those countries where people arrive are better placed to make sure people are registered, that people who don't have the right to asylum are returned swiftly," he told BBC radio.
In another country that has been welcoming to refugees, Sweden,
anti-racist foundation Expo says the number of neo-Nazi propaganda
actions has reached record heights. "It's an enormous increase. Just
in a couple of years, in three years' time, it has almost doubled. We
have never seen this many activities before," Expo investigator
Anna-Sofia Quensel told Swedish Radio.
She said the current crisis is expected to have: "adverse consequences for threats linked to the extreme-right scene. This is because opposition to immigration is one of the most important issues and an important mobilizing factor for the groups.
She denied reports of evidence of ISIL infiltrating the refugees to carry out terror plots, saying the threat was more likely to be internal.
"It is considered unlikely that the Norwegian
asylum system is being used by groups like ISIL and al-Qaeda for asylum
seekers arriving with violent intentions."
'Surge of the Extreme Right'Her comments come a day after European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said that unless the migrant crisis in Europe was addressed properly there would be a surge of right-wing extremism across the continent.
"We have to make sure that those countries where people arrive are better placed to make sure people are registered, that people who don't have the right to asylum are returned swiftly," he told BBC radio.
"If we're not able to tackle this issue, if
we're not able to find sustainable solutions, you will see a surge
of the extreme right across the European continent."
There has been a rise in the number of arson attacks on asylum
hostels in Germany, many of them perpetrated by right-wing extremists.
Officials are concerned that neo-Nazi networks may be spreading
across the country.
Supporters
of the German right-wing movement PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against
the Islamisation of the Occident) hold up a poster showing German
Chancellor Angela Merkel in a uniform with an Euro-logo-armband as they
attend a PEGIDA rally on June 1, 2015 in Dresden, eastern Germany.
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