Terrorist Refugee Invasion

Al-Qaida terror boss caught on migrant boat, Authorities 'tried to hide' news for fear of creating 'panic', by Leo Hohmann, 11/9/15, WND

Warnings about terrorists infiltrating the ranks of the Muslim boat people washing ashore daily on Europe’s beaches are no longer just warnings.

For the second time in the past few months, a known terrorist with direct ties to an international terror organization has been caught trying to enter Italy posing as an asylum seeker.

Tunisian-born Ben Nasr Mehdi was discovered among 200 refugees in a migrant boat off the coast of Sicily on Oct. 4. He was first arrested in Italy in 2007 and sentenced to seven years imprisonment for plotting terror attacks with a group that has since been linked to ISIS. He tried to return to Italy last month in a boat that was attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Libya.

But authorities tried to hide the story, fearing their political opponents would use it to create “panic” among the population, the German channel n-tv reported. The story finally got out several weeks after Mehdi was detained last week.

“This is a totally predictable story to everyone but Angela Merkel and her supporters in Europe (which group includes most of the EU governments and media),” wrote blogger Thomas Lifson for the American Thinker.

“President Obama plans to admit tens (or hundreds) of thousands of these ‘refugees’ to the United States. It is obvious to anyone but a progressive that infiltration of terrorists is an irresistible opportunity for ISIS, al-Qaeda, and everyone else who wants to do us harm in the name of Allah.”

Obama plans to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year and 75,000 more refugees from Somalia, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma, Bhutan, Iran, Iraq and other countries. The fact is, Obama is bringing far more than 10,000 Syrian Muslims to America.

The United Nations already has 20,000 Syrians processed and in its pipeline destined for more than 180 U.S. cities and towns, according to the U.N. refugee agency’s website.

This, despite repeated warnings by the FBI that it is unable to screen the Syrian refugees for connections to terrorism. WND reported the latest warning Oct. 22 from FBI Director James Comey, who testified before the House Homeland Security Committee.

Among Syrian refugees, 97 percent are Muslim and the vast majority of those are Sunni Muslim, a religious faith shared with ISIS, al-Nusra Front, al-Qaida, al-Shabab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and many other jihadist groups.

Although he gave a false name, migration officers identified Mehdi through finger print records, according to the Independent. Mehdi, 38, was interrogated and then deported to Tunisian authorities. If he had not already been arrested and convicted, he would not have had fingerprints in the terrorist database.

The United Nations is working on a global ID system for refugees that would collect biometric data and is rolling it out in a few test areas in Asia and Africa, WND reported Oct. 30. It was also reported in that article that at least 7,000 Muslim male refugees have disappeared and are unaccounted for after arriving in German refugee camps. They never checked in and were never identified.

The news of another top terrorist infiltrating Europe comes a week after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Urban publicly called out billionaire philanthropist George Soros as stoking the migrant crisis in an attempt to degrade what’s left of the nation-state system in Europe. Soros practically admitted as much in an op-ed for Project Syndicate.

Italian authorities have said they regard Mehdi as one of the most dangerous terrorists to have operated in Italy, the Independent reported. He is considered to be an explosives expert and a contact for organizations such as al-Qaida that recruit jihadists from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Italy’s interior minister, Angelino Alfano, had previously insisted there was no evidence that Islamic terrorists were sneaking into Europe aboard migrant boats, despite warnings from right-of-center politicians that the wave of migration from North Africa represented a serious security threat. Alfano has said, however, that Italian security forces are constantly monitoring for such threats.

An ISIS operative told BuzzFeed earlier this year that the terror group already had 4,000 trained fighters inside Europe who had entered as asylum seekers. That was in May, and many critics of Europe’s open doors policy are saying the number of established terror cells is likely growing steadily across the continent and could be activated at any time.

In April, UKIP leader Nigel Farage told the European Parliament that terrorists would try to exploit the crisis. He told MEPs: “When ISIS says they want to flood our continent with half a million Islamic extremists they mean it, and there is nothing in [the Common European Asylum Policy] that will stop them.

“I fear we face a direct threat to our civilization if we allow large numbers of people from that war torn region into Europe.”

The following month, Italian authorities arrested Abdel Majid Touil, a Moroccan accused of being involved in a terror attack on the Bardo museum in Tunisia. He had smuggled himself into Italy on a migrant boat in February.

Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has until now insisted there is no evidence that Islamist terrorists are smuggling themselves into the country among the thousands of migrants, but his ministry has admitted that Ben Nasr Mehdi is exceptionally dangerous.

When police arrested him in 2007, they found explosive detonators, poisons and guerrilla warfare manuals. Prosecutors said he had been part of a group that was setting up militant cells that had recruited potential suicide bombers.

Authorities intercepted phone calls in which he indicated he had supplied instructions and contacts to terrorists in Damascus, thus marking him out as a senior operative.

European leaders are becoming increasingly worried about the potential terror threat from the migrant crisis. Last month, German Interior Minister Thomas de Mazière said his country had become a “focus of international terrorism,” thanks to migration. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has also expressed similar fears.

http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/al-qaida-terror-boss-caught-on-migrant-boat/