Page 26 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

SECTION I: EXTREMISM, RADICALIZATION AND CYBER THREATS AS AN IMPORTANT
SECURITY FACTORS FOR COUNTERING TERRORISM PROCESSES

All these attacks were carried out by foreign fighters of the Islamic State, resulting in the
deaths of hundreds of people.

Outside Europe, attacks that have been carried out directly by fighters of IS can be found
in Libya where “an attack on the luxury Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli, Libya, killed at least 10
people. The Libyan branch of ISIS claimed responsibility for the assault, which killed five
foreigners” (Lister et al., 2018, e-source). The Libyan branch of the Islamic State has been
responsible for several more terrorist attacks in which several hundred people have died. At-
tacks by Islamic State terrorists have occurred in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Other
attacks which carried out by the Islamic State or by their supported group Boko Haram were
instigated in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tunisia, and other countries all over the African continent.

All these examples demonstrate that even though there is no clear certainty that FTFs will
carry out some of these attacks, experience shows that the possibility is there and it is real.

2.2 Legal Prosecution of Returning Foreign Fighters

In this section, we discuss ways of dealing with the return of foreign fighters to their countries
of origin, and we can conclude that most countries are using two different ways to deal with
them. One is the so-called soft approach, which includes processes of de-radicalization, reha-
bilitation, and re-integration. The other is a “hard” approach; this primarily means criminal
prosecution. There is still an assumption that foreign fighters are danger to society when they
return to their home environments. We should consider that these people have been part of a
terrorist organization and participated in conflict.

Whereas not all foreign fighters (FFs) are foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs), the United Na-
tions Security Council (UNSC) does not distinguish between the terms, but only uses FTFs.
This shows that for the UN, the problem of FFs is mainly viewed from a counterterrorism
(CT) perspective. The very first reference to FTFs was made in UNSC Resolution 2170 of 15
August 2014, without defining them (or terrorism). This (legally binding) Resolution called
upon all UN Member States “to take national measures to suppress the flow of foreign terror-
ist fighters […] and bring [them] to justice” (Paulussen and Pitcher, 2018, p 5). The fact that
UN sees these people from a counter-terrorism point of views says that it is necessary to make
their return noticed, even though some of them perhaps did not plan their future actions to be
dangerous to their surroundings, and did not participate in the most dangerous crimes.

The first thing that is necessary when foreign fighters return is to identify and question them
and to evaluate the risk that this person represents, in order to reduce any danger and the pos-
sibility of an individual carrying out a terrorist attack. European Union countries have few
solutions for what to do with returning foreign fighters, and certainly do not have good an-
swers for the situation; nor do they know what to do with fighters, their citizens, who are still
in Syria and Iraq, and have not yet returned. “Until now, European countries have not been
willing to take back their citizens who have been in camps in northern Syria for some time.
There are numerous obstacles to their repatriation. Numerous European countries fear that
they could be released because there is a lack of evidence on their illegal activities in Syria
” (Dnevni list, 2019, e-source).

There is still one indisputable fact that we have mentioned before, and that is that people have
the right to return to their countries of origin, even if they have been part of a foreign con-

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