Sanchez’s immigration policies are putting Europe and the Jews at risk

According to Jupol, the largest union in the Spanish National Police, at least a dozen jihadists have crossed the Spanish border, reaching Ceuta and Melilla during last week’s invasion. Laura Garcia, spokesperson for the union, told EsRadio that “it is possible that there are currently a dozen jihadists who have entered the country.” Furthermore, according to Garcia, these are terrorists “who were already convicted in Spain and deported to Morocco, and who have returned.”

And again: “We have intelligence services, both within the National Police and the Civil Guard, elite units that do their job very well, and they have just detected these invaders on our soil”, she affirmed.

Manuel Gaviria Florentino, leading figure for the right-wing party Vox in the Andalusia region, attacked Spanish PM’s policies on immigration on his Instagram account: “Jihadists among the Ceuta invaders. The mafias transporting them to the Andalusian coast. And Pedro Sánchez on vacation. His concessions to Morocco and his suicidal immigration policies have turned our borders into a sieve. We have to throw him out”.

Intelligence agencies have historically warned that terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and ISIS have attempted to exploit clandestine human trafficking pipelines to insert operatives into Europe via Spain. Moreover, with a significant flow like that from Morocco to the Spanish enclaves, it’s unthinkable to assume that there couldn’t also be radicalized individuals and it wouldn’t be a surprise.

For instance, the 25-year-old Moroccan individual arrested in January 2023 for a machete attack on two churches in southern Spain, in which one clergyman was killed and another seriously injured, was on Spanish soil illegally and was to be deported.

Denial is a well-known trait among much of the European left-wing political establishment. It’s worth recalling that for years, even in Italy, several left-wing politicians have been saying that “terrorists don’t arrive by sea,” only to be proven wrong by the facts.

In fact, the list of terrorists who reached Europe by sea and who struck (or were about to strike) in recent years is consistent. Among the most notorious is Tunisian Anis Amri, the Berlin Christmas market attacker, killed on the night of December 23, 2016, in Sesto San Giovanni after a firefight with an Italian State Police patrol. Amri had arrived in Lampedusa aboard a boat in 2011.

Between April and June 2018, Gambian citizens Sillah Ousman and Alagie Touray were arrested in Naples. The two had participated in military training at a mobile camp in Libya where future ISIS soldiers or suicide bombers are trained, and were ready to carry out attacks in Europe. In December 2016, the two jihadists boarded a boat bound for Italy and arrived on the Sicilian coast, in Messina. Touray was transferred to Naples and Sillah to Puglia.

Then there is the case of Somali Mohsin Omar Ibrahim, alias “Anass Khalil,” arrested in December 2018 in Bari while planning to blow up churches during the Christmas season. Having arrived in Sicily aboard a boat in 2016, the Somali then reached Forlì and, after obtaining a humanitarian residence permit, returned to Puglia, settling in a building illegally occupied by non-EU citizens near the Bari train station. On January 7, 2018, Anass Khalil hit a passerby in the head with a glass bottle after watching a video urging Muslims to wage war on Christians in their own countries.

On August 13, 2018, Tunisian authorities stopped a group of nine jihadists boarding a rubber dinghy with a dozen other immigrants, all headed for the Sicilian coast. Two months later, a 25-year-old Tunisian man who had arrived in Lampedusa in July and was staying at a local hotspot was recognized by a fellow Tunisian who reported him to the authorities as a former ISIS fighter in Syria. He was immediately repatriated from Palermo airport.

Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud, the Pakistani who injured four people outside the former Charlie Hebdo headquarters on September 25, 2020, had also passed through Italy before reaching France as a “refugee.”

Moreover, Abdesalem Lassoued, the gunman who shot dead two Swedish football fans in Brussels in October 2023, had escaped from prison in Tunisia. Belgian prosecutors explained that Abdesalem Lassoued had been sentenced to 26 years in prison in 2005 by a Tunisian court for crimes including attempted murder. He escaped in 2011, managed to board a small boat and arrived illegally on the Italian island of Lampedusa. Lassoued then moved to Belgium, where he applied for asylum. When rejected, he fell off the radar.

In conclusion, it is a fact that irregular migration flows pose a real and proven threat not only in relation to crime but also to jihadist terrorism. The Italian government was therefore right to immediately suspend the Schengen Agreement with Spain. Italians are well aware of the problem of terrorist infiltration through uncontrolled immigration, and the Meloni government acted immediately to protect the security not only of Italy but of Europe as a whole, given that in most cases, terrorists arriving in Italy have since moved on to other EU countries where they have subsequently attacked. Sanchez’s irresponsible immigration policies are putting at risk not just Spain, but the whole European continent and the Jewish communities too (considering the level of anti-Semitism in the Islamic world); in addition, this happening at a time when Iranian and Palestinian terrorist networks are particularly active, as recent arrests and intelligence warnings have shown.