Young Muslims from Europe are going to Iraq to train with militant Islamic insurgents, the European Union’s top terrorism official said on Thursday.
The trend worrying counter-terrorism officials, both because of the potential for increased violence in Iraq, and because they fear militants who gain experience there will return to pose a threat in Europe.
“There are cases of young Muslims from Western Europe going to Iraq to receive military training and that is an unfortunate and negative trend,” EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gijs de Vries told Reuters in an interview.
Prosecutors probing a suspected Iraq recruitment network in France believe French militants may have entered Iraq via neighbouring Syria, noting an increase in the number of French Muslims travelling to the country to study Islam in 2003