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.