Swiss police searching Geneva for suspected extremists

UN security officers guards the area of the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva on December 10. AP

GENEVA // Police raised Geneva’s terror alert level and were searching the Swiss city on Thursday for several suspected extremists believed to have links to ISIL.

The regional security department said it had received information on Wednesday from Swiss federal authorities concerning “suspicious individuals likely to be in Geneva or the Geneva area”.

Police were “actively looking” for these individuals “in the context of the investigation following the Paris attacks”, the department said, while reinforcements were deployed at key locations including United Nations buildings.

“We went from a vague threat to a specific threat,” Geneva security spokesman Emmanuelle Lo Verso told Swiss Radio, adding that the search for the suspects was at “a very active phase”.

A security source at the UN complex in Geneva said the search was for four people with possible ties to ISIL. The extremist group claimed the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris last month but the individuals were not believed to have any direct link to those atrocities.

The UN source said the Palais des Nations – the UN’s European headquarters – was evacuated on Wednesday night as security personnel conducted an office-to-office searches.

Security guards posted at the UN gates were also carrying submachine guns on Thursday, a departure from normal practice.

Geneva’s government said police “have increased their level of vigilance”, while the ATS news agency reported that security reinforcements were being deployed at key buildings around the city, including the headquarters of major international organisations and the airport.

According to ATS, the heightened alert level has not led to the cancellation of a major festival due to be held in Geneva’s historic old city over the weekend.

Geneva is just over 500 kilometres from Paris and the Swiss city is almost entirely enclosed by France, with border crossings often unmanned.

Police in the two French regions bordering Geneva – Ain and Haute-Savoie – said controls had been beefed up at all crossings.

“The police, the gendarmes and the customs officers are on the ground and are reinforcing their inspections,” said a police spokesman in Ain, with similar comments from an official in Haute-Savoie.

Last month, French police searched the homes of two imams from Geneva’s main mosque, which is just metres from the UN complex.

The imams reportedly live in the French border town of Ferney-Voltaire.

Swiss media reports said leaders at the mosque had been preaching extremist ideology, but there was no indication from police that the two imams were implicated in any wrongdoing.

The searches in Geneva come amid widening investigations across Europe into possible ISIL sympathisers.

Last month, Switzerland said it had active criminal proceedings against 33 individuals over suspected ties to extremist groups, but that only three people were in custody.

The most serious case involves a cell of possible radicals uncovered last year in the canton of Schaffhausen, near the German border.

* Agence France-Presse