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EU tries to keep close eye on fighters in Syria
European Union nations pledged Friday to step up cooperation in an effort to keep the more than 600 EU citizens now fighting in Syria from veering toward terrorism upon their return home.
| Going to track them? Maybe you should just give them the Verizon unlimited plan... |
EU home affairs ministers said they plan to increase surveillance of social media, intensify cooperation with nations that border Syria like Turkey and urge the European Parliament to approve legislation to make suspicious travel to the region more traceable.
| It's like PRISM, only with European technical competence... |
French Interior Minister Manuel Valls says the number of EU citizens fighting abroad with potential links to terror groups "has never been seen at this scale." He said it by far outstripped recent wars and conflicts in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Sahel region.
| A suggestion: don't let them back into your countries. Any hard boy who goes to Somalia to fight gets to stay in Somalia. He's made his allegiance clear, and it's not to La Belle France... |
Valls said a survey of the eight nations most concerned about citizens fighting with the opposition in Syria showed that some 500 had left for Syria, and said the total for the EU's 27 member nations would be higher than 600.
He refused to divulge specific numbers for other nations but said some 120 Frenchmen had already gone to Syria.
"In less than two years, the mass in Syria is bigger than that what we have known" in other recent conflicts combined, he said.
Posted by: tipper 2013-06-07 |
