Turkey holding violent refugees, may unleash them on Europe - Mosul Archbishop
Turkey is hosting several thousand jihadist refugees
until a politically viable opportunity arises to unleash them on to Europe, the
Archbisoh of Archbishop Mosul, Iraq, Najeeb Michaeel, told the National
Catholic Register’s Solène Tadié.
Warning Europe that the jihadists could wreak havoc
on the continent, just as they did in Iraq and the Middle East, the 2020
Sakharov Prize nominee warned against Ankara’s use of the migrants as a
political tool.
Turkey continues to be a regional transit hub for
the Islamic State (ISIS), although Ankara has recently stepped up efforts to
counter attempts to smuggle ISIS fighters and weaponry into war-torn Syria,
according to U.S. State Department watchdog report issued in August.
Meanwhile, Turkey has accused Western countries,
especially in Europe, of being too slow to take back citizens who travelled to
the Middle East to fight for the jihadist organisation.
Duringrecent trips to refugee camps in Turkey, the
Mosul Archbishop said he found “several thousand jihadists infiltrated into the
hearts of families seeking to reach Europe.”
Ankara is “keeping all these people knowing that it
will open the doors when it wants to,” he claimed. “The problem of migrants is
not only humanitarian but also political. It is used for political purposes.”
Europeans must root out radical Islam, according to
the archbishop, as the ideology “cannot adapt to a country like France, whose
three fundamental principles are ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’”
In October, France announced a crackdown against
radical Islam after a schoolteacher was beheaded for having shown derogatory cartoons
of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
