Jihadists using migrant crisis as cover—Czech president

By: 9 years ago

Czech Republic’s president Milos Zeman addresses his supporters during a rally marking the 26th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Prague, Czech Republic, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015. AP Photo

PRAGUE, Czech Republic—Jihadists are using the migrant crisis as cover to slip into the European Union, Czech President Milos Zeman said Tuesday, urging his country’s military to prepare to defend its borders.

“It is naive to think there is no link between the migrant wave and terrorism, because then we would have to assume the migrant wave does not include potential jihadists,” the outspoken 71-year-old leftwinger told Czech military chiefs.

“The danger has come close to our borders,” he added.

“We cannot exactly estimate their number of course, but some of them took part in the Paris attacks” on November 13, which left at least 130 dead.

Zeman also quoted intelligence reports saying jihadist terrorists had used the Czech Republic as a gateway to western Europe.

Last week, Zeman triggered controversy when he attended an anti-Islam rally in Prague in the company of far-right politicians and a paramilitary unit.

He accused Islam of being “a culture of assassins and religious hatred.”

Leftist Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka shot down Zeman’s controversial comments, saying he should not have appeared “at the meeting of a xenophobic sect which was filled with spreading intensive hatred.”

Members of an anti-NATO Czech paramilitary unit including former soldiers also attended the rally.

Leading Czech daily Dnes reported Tuesday its members are training to detain migrants, insisting they are using their “military skills to push patriotic interests.”

The International Organization for Migration estimated on Tuesday that nearly 860,000 migrants had landed in Europe so far this year and just over 3,500 have died while crossing the Mediterranean in search of safety.

The influx has caused tensions between EU members and has given a boost to far-fight, anti-immigration groups across the continent.

Few asylum seekers have chosen to stay in the largely secular Czech Republic, a European Union and NATO member nation of 10.5 million people, with a majority heading to wealthier Germany and other western EU states.

Nearly 70 percent of Czechs oppose the arrival of migrants and refugees in their country, a recent survey showed.