Staff Reporter :A number of recent terrorist incidents targeting westerners in Bangladesh might lead to an increased future risk of attacks and kidnappings, says European Union’s Law Enforcement Agency (Europol) report on Saturday. The overall threat to the security of the European Union (EU) has increased over recent years and remains on an upward trajectory, Europol in its Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT), 2016, says. The report said the main concern reported by EU Member States continues to be jihadist terrorism and the closely related phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters, travelling to and from conflict zones. The attacks in Paris in January and November 2015 represented a clear shift in the intent and capability of jihadist terrorists to inflict mass casualties on urban populations designed to induce a high state of well-publicised terror.The emergence of branches of IS and al-Qaeda in South-East Asia, and a number of terrorist incidents targeting westerners in Bangladesh, might lead to an increased future risk of attacks and kidnappings in those regions, it claimed.Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, however, recently said investigators identified all homegrown militants, but found no members of IS in Bangladesh.The report said several European jihadists hold prominent positions in IS and are likely to maintain contact with terrorist networks in their home countries.This new edition of the EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT), which Europol has produced on an annual basis since 2006, provides an overview of the failed, foiled and completed terrorist attacks that took place in the EU during 2015, and of arrests, convictions and penalties issued.The 13 November Paris attacks introduced IS’s tactics of using small arms in combination with person-borne improvised explosive devices (PBIED) in suicide vests, designed to cause mass casualties.The way these attacks were prepared and carried out — plotted by returnees, very likely receiving direction from IS leadership, and including the use of local recruits to carry out the attacks — lead them to the assessment that similar attacks could again be staged in the EU in the near future.IS has repeatedly threatened the Iberian Peninsula and EU members of the anti-IS coalition in their propaganda videos, making specific references to Belgium, France, Italy and the UK.It is a highly challenging task for the security services and law enforcement authorities to prevent every planned terrorist attack by keeping track of the ever increasing numbers of people suspected of being, in one way or another, sympathetic to IS ideology, and to focus their attention for unspecified lengths of time on those who might be willing and able to perform violent acts, it observed.Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda affiliates — and AQAP in particular — are still a factor to be considered and a reason for the EU to focus on a broader range of jihadist terrorist groups, the report said.The developments in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, such as the political unrest in Libya, enabling IS to take up a prominent position in countries bordering the EU, add to the overall threat to Member States.Numbers of arrests for Jihadist terrorist activities have again increased in 2015 compared to 2014, illustrating the enormous efforts being undertaken across Europe to fight this kind of terrorism.
