Swedish Spy Chief Admits ISIS Sympathizers Have Increased Tenfold to 2,000

Patrick Poole | 10:01 AM on July 04, 2017

The first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem.

That should be what advisers to the Swedish prime minister should be whispering in his ear constantly, in case he fails to respond to comments made by his spy chief yesterday.

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The National (UAE) reports:

Sweden is home to at least 2,000 ISIL sympathisers who are believed to have been radicalised over the internet, the country’s spy chief revealed on Monday.

Anders Thornberg, who heads the domestic intelligence agency Säpo, said the number of ISIL loyalists had increased from a suspected 200 in 2010; a 10-fold leap.

“We have never seen anything like it before,” Mr Thornberg told the Swedish news agency TT. “We would say that it has gone from hundreds to thousands now.

“This is the ‘new normal’ … It is an historic challenge that extremist circles are growing,” he said.

He also reported that Swedish security police are receiving 6,000 intelligence tips on Islamist extremist activity every month.

Last month I reported here at PJ Media that jihadist arrests in the EU had doubled last year from 2015:

And since 2007, terrorism in OECD countries has skyrocketed a whopping 900 percent:

The scope of the Islamist terror problem in Europe — as the Swedish spy chief now admits — is without precedent.

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Another remarkable element to this story is that just a few months ago President Trump observed that Sweden has having such issues. The Swedish prime minister responded with mocking:

Reportedly, more than 150 former ISIS fighters have returned to Sweden. And what is the Swedish government’s response? Finding them jobs:

https://twitter.com/MastersonKris/status/879991050114387968

And they’ve even gone so far as to give these former ISIS fighters new identities.

Sweden is hardly alone in confronting the returning ISIS fighter issue.

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And the cold, hard reality is that the problem may now be unmanageable.

After the Manchester-area suicide bombing, UK officials admitted that they have 23,000 jihadist subjects that they are trying to track:

But as I reported last week, UK terror experts believe that number vastly understates the scope of the jihadist problem:

In response to the Manchester bombing, Prime Minister May for the first time sent soldiers into the streets of London:

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Those troops were taken off the streets just a few days later. And then the London Bridge attack happened.

We learned that the Manchester bomber had fought with the “rebels” in Libya. And there are anywhere from 350-450 former ISIS fighters that have returned:

Where are these jihadists? London Mayor Sadiq Khan evades the question:

In Denmark, they’ve found an unusual resolution to the “Jobs for ISIS” problem:

France, which has seen a number of deadly attacks killing hundreds over the past year and a half, has taken measures to address their issues.

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But the size and scope of the problems in France are unmanageable:

…as they are in Germany as well:

Many of the recent terror attacks in the EU have their roots in Belgium:

Unlike Europe, the U.S. is geographically protected by two vast oceans. And yet we don’t have any cause to wag our fingers at our European cousins:

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We also have a returning jihadist fighter problem, caused in no small measure by the past administration’s policy of inviting them back home:

As we’ve discovered in my own hometown of Columbus, Ohio:

https://twitter.com/alimhaider/status/732212321607553024

Despite the fact that our jihadist problem is well beyond the ability of the FBI to remotely deal with, we’re not even close to being as bad off as Europe:

After a rash of attacks earlier this year, I warned that we may be looking at another “Summer of Terror” in the West:

So far, with attacks nearly every week in Europe, this summer has lived up to that billing.

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We are just 10 days away from the one-year anniversary of the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, that killed 86 and injured 434. That attack kicked off a whole series of incidents across Europe:

Security authorities are coming to terms with how vast this problem is now, and they privately (and sometime publicly) admit how inadequate they are at dealing with it. That also is true for the U.S.

As I noted in the beginning of this article, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. But now comes the hard part of having to deal with it.

Patrick Poole
For media inquiries, please contact [email protected]

Patrick Poole is a national security and terrorism correspondent for PJMedia. Follow him on Twitter.
Category: HOMELAND SECURITY
Tags: HOMELAND SECURITY

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