French Magistrate Says Iraqi Terrorist Veterans Threaten Europe

[ECH1969]

The biggest terrorist threat facing Europe comes from Islamic radicals who went to Iraq to fight alongside the insurgents and are now returning home to carry out new attacks, said Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France's leading anti- terrorist investigator.

``Some of them have gone over and come back with the intention of continuing Jihad in Europe by working with groups from the Maghreb,'' Bruguiere, speaking to journalists at a conference in Monaco, said yesterday. ``This is the principal menace we face.'' The Maghreb is the North African region of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

``One of the biggest dangers we face is the return of people from Iraq,'' said Fernando Reinares, senior analyst on international terrorism at the Real Instituto Elcano, a Madrid- based research group. ``They are better trained and even more highly motivated than the ones that came back from Afghanistan or Chechnya. We have to expect further attacks.''

``All you need is five guys who have learned bomb making from Zarqawi and have experience on how to avoid security forces,'' said Thomas Sanderson, deputy director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, referring to al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who was killed by a U.S. air raid in June. ``Europe is going to seem like a playground to them.''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGIRnfHVW09w&refer=home

[Orrin_73]

1. It disappoints me too see the french join the war

crowd even after chirac was against it. As a muslim living in europe the anti-muslim hysteria is becoming intolerable for me.