EU wants details of Gulf flight passengers

Amid a flurry of terrorism-related arrests in Europe, officials want more sharing of passenger manifests to track possible foreign fighters joining training camps or conflicts in the Middle East.

Tunisian-born Zahbi Zalouti, left, who was arrested in Stockholm on December 30, is suspected of planning a terror attack in Copenhagen together with three other men.

ROTTERDAM // The European Union would like even more cooperation from Gulf countries in combating terrorism, says the EU's counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove.

His remarks come in the wake of a spate of terrorism-related arrests in Europe that, he says, highlights the need for more action in Europe and elsewhere. They come also at a time when Europe is on the alert for threats against Christians celebrating the Orthodox Christmas, following attacks on Christians in Egypt and Iraq.

"It is important to have more information on passengers flying in the Gulf," said Mr De Kerchove from his office in Brussels. He emphasised that it was crucial to be able to form a picture of foreign fighters joining conflicts and training camps in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

He also urged Gulf countries to keep improving the fight against the people who are providing money for terrorism. While Saudi Arabia had made big strides in that respect, Mr de Kerchove said he is still concerned about "the flow of money leaving the Gulf for the insurgency in Afghanistan and to groups in Pakistan." He declined to name specific Gulf countries. Both the EU and the US are in close contact with the GCC to improve cooperation on both issues, he said.

He spoke after police in different European countries carried out counter-terrorism actions over the last six weeks of 2010. Authorities arrested dozens of people, many of whom remain in custody. Most of the operations targeted groups of up to a dozen people and several involved multiple countries.

Mr de Kerchove said al Qa'eda and affiliated groups had been urging more attacks in the West at least since September. He said that this was in response to the group coming under pressure in Pakistan's tribal region and that it was encouraging its sympathisers and followers to mount attacks, even small ones, to help re-establish its image.

Not only Gulf countries but European countries needed to share more information on passengers, particularly the Passenger Name Record, or PNR, gathered by airlines, said Mr de Kerchove. The European Commission is expected to propose an EU-wide system for this within the next few weeks despite privacy concerns among a number of politicians, he said.

Such information is especially important because security services are having a harder time identifying possible threats. "It is more difficult than before because we are dealing now with many EU nationals and residents who fly below the radar," said Mr De Kerchove. He was also urging the EU to consider making it a specific criminal offence to join terrorism training abroad.

European counter-terrorism experts said it was too early to call the recent arrests a trend but agreed that there had been an increase in the number of terrorism-linked cases in recent months.

"There is an increase and it is worrisome to the security services because there is often a foreign connection, to Pakistan or Afghanistan for example. And there are calls by al Qa'eda and others not to come to them but for their followers to take action where they are," said Edwin Bakker, a counter-terrorism expert at Leiden university in the Netherlands.

He said that the discourse on many extremist websites had changed. "Not what can al Qa'eda do for you but what can you do for al Qa'eda?"

In December alone five people in Denmark and Sweden were arrested for allegedly planning attacks against the Danish newspaper that published the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005. In the Netherlands, police arrested 12 Somalis after receiving a warning of an "imminent attack" but released all of them shortly after. In Britain, nine men remained in custody after 12 were detained on suspicion of planning a pre-Christmas terror offensive. And in the last week of November, 11 men were arrested in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany for allegedly planning to send recruits and money to militants in Chechnya.

Despite the increase in arrests, the total number is still below those in 2004-2005, said the French counter-terrorism expert Jean-Luc Marret. The number spiked then in conjunction with the US-led invasion of Iraq, he said.

Many of the recent arrests may be due to the increased activity of European and international counter-terrorism agencies. The number of operations that are actually being carried out remains relatively small, say experts. In December a suicide bomber carried out an attack in the Swedish capital Stockholm in which two people were slightly wounded. Police believe that he may have acted alone but that he had received instructions and training while on trips to the Middle East.

Often it is exactly such trips that set the alarm bells ringing, said Magnus Ranstorp, a counter-terrorism expert at Sweden's National Defence College. "What is common among the arrests is the increasing importance of terrorist travel. It is absolutely at the heart of all of this."

European and other international cooperation was crucial to intercepting potential attackers, said Mr Ranstorp. "It's a massive puzzle exercise that happens on a daily basis. Some of the smaller countries just don't have the capacity."