The arrest of a presumed terrorist who arrived as a boat migrant is fuelling a public debate in Italy about what security risk arrivals from North Africa might pose. Looming local elections are not helping to keep the conversation calm. Rome (dpa) - In Italy, a country grappling with a record influx of refugees from the Mediterranean, critics of open-door migration policies feel vindicated after the arrest of a suspected jihadist who entered the country as a boat migrant.
Morocco-born Abdel Majid Touil was among a group of some 90 migrants who landed in Sicily in mid-February, Italian police said Wednesday, a day after arresting the 22-year-old in connection with a deadly terrorist attack in Tunisia on March 18. "We have been invaded by clandestine [migrants] and terrorists. The government is pathetic in still denying it. And it is criminal to continue with welcoming policies. Let's put a stop to [migrant] landings," Maurizio Gasparri of the conservative Forza Italia party said Thursday.
The Northern League, a far-right opposition party accused of stirring anti-migrant sentiment ahead of May 31 regional elections, reacted to Touil's arrest by filing a crime report to the police, which accused the government of abetting terrorism and other crimes. The League's argument is that, by running official rescue missions in the Mediterranean, the government is giving a helping hand to smugglers who run the migrant trade out of Libya, and is indirectly responsible for the fatal shipwrecks that happen on the way.
Last year, 170,000 boat migrants landed in Italy, but the country received only 64,000 asylum requests, exposing Italian authorities to accusations of failing to keep tabs on incomers. Many are believed to move on to northern Europe. A European Union foreign minister, speaking anonymously earlier this week, admitted that terrorist infiltration among sea migrants was a worry.
"There is a great fear of an Islamic State terrorist blowing himself up and it becoming clear shortly afterwards that he reached the EU via the sea rescue mission in the Mediterranean," he said. "I need not explain what our discussion would suddenly look like with the first refugee who is not a refugee, but a terrorist. Nobody knows how to deal with this scenario," the minister added.
Greater anxiety about the supposed security threat could make it harder to implement common EU migration policies that Italy has long clamoured for, such as beefed-up sea rescue patrols in the Mediterranean and quotas to spread asylum seekers across the bloc. Professor Christian Kaunert, a security expert at the University of Dundee, Scotland, told dpa that a terrorist presence among boat migrants is "plausible" but unproven, given that many come from countries where the Islamic State is present.
"The real risk is overblown," Kaunert argued, warning against overreaction. "There is already a lot of empathy missing in the debate about migration. Lots of people in Europe complain that too many migrants come in, without reflecting why that is so." According to humanitarian organisations, the Mediterranean is the world's most dangerous sea migration route, used overwhelmingly by people fleeing poverty and conflict. Many argue that would-be jihadists have safer ways to reach Europe.
"If I were a terrorist, the last way of crossing the border I would choose would certainly be a migrant boat," Gian Luigi Gigli, a centrist lawmaker, said in a recent parliamentary debate, suggesting that land crossings via the Balkans would offer an easier route. In the same debate, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano stressed that Touil - who is wanted in connection with the attack on the national museum in Tunis, in which 24 people died - was not a security threat when he landed as a boat migrant.
"It is only after the Bardo Museum massacre [which took place a month after his arrival in Italy] that Touil takes on the profile of a presumed terrorist," Alfano said, adding that authorities were investigating his role and his movements from the time he landed to the day he was arrested.
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