Europe Terrorist-Compromised

"[Libya has] immense potential [for ISIS]. It has a long coast and looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat."
"The number of trips known as 'illegal immigration' from this coast, which are huge in number ... if this was even partially exploited and developed strategically, pandemonium could be wrought in the southern European states and it is even possible that there could be a closure of shipping lines and targeting of Crusader ships and tankers."
Abu Arhim al-Libin, ISIS propagandist

"Those boat people who go for immigration purposes and try to cross the Mediterranean ... in the next few weeks, if we do not act together, they will be boats full of terrorists also."
Nasser Kamel, Egypt's ambassador to London

"Twitter has shut down Libim's accounts several times and each time he starts a new one he gets thousands of followers very quickly, which is typical of an influential ISIS affiliate."
"The risks Europe faces from ISIS's pre-eminence in Libya are substantial."
Charlie Winter, researcher, Quilliam Foundation

Islamic State has identified Libya as a "gateway" to bring itself the enablement of waging war directly to southern Europe. The plan appears to flood Libya with jihadists from Syria and Iraq, to  sail across the Mediterranean as migrants using people-trafficking vessels. Quilliam research has revealed the plan, describing how the terrorists would rampage through the cities of southern Europe on an atrocity-laden slaughter spree.

At the same time maritime shipping would be a target.

Libya based cells are already established. One of which revealed the video of the beheading of the 21 Egyptian Copt workers, kidnapped and held prisoner until their beheading, revenge against Egypt's campaign to free the Sinai Peninsula from the stranglehold of Islamist terrorists including Islamic State affiliates. Leading to the Egyptian airforce bombing the ISIS-held Libyan city of Derna.

Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has been persuading he United Nations that a UN-backed coalition was required to rid Libya of Islamist extremists. He spoke as well of the U.S.-led airborne alliance expanding its mission to target ISIS forces in Libya as well as those in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. has been linked to Shiite militias and Iran in its Syrian and Iraqi mission. This might be an opportunity for the U.S. to repair its relations with Egypt.

Libya, even before the downfall of Moammar Ghadafi, and increased since, has acted as a hub for trafficking boatloads of refugees into Europe. The immense weapons depots that Islamists took possession of when they were abandoned by Ghadafi's military are now in the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates and those of ISIS; the availability of high-tech arms no problem at all, some of them acquired in fact from Britain by the Ghadafi regime.

The Libyan army says this neighbourhood of Derna was home to an IS training site. Photo by Twitter.

The former head of the British spy agency MI6, John Sawers, said ground troops should be committed by Britain to halt Libya's "being exploited by fanatics". Ironically, it was Britain and France that led the charge for NATO to become involved in destroying Ghadafi's reign, in giving air cover to the Libyan tribal rebels, many of whom were obviously dangerous Islamists. North Africa has never been the same, since.

Now, the very real potential of ISIS using people-trafficking vessels as a means to smuggle terrorists into Europe is a concern shared by security officials. Italy's interior ministry estimated some 200,000 refugees and immigrants are preparing to make the dangerous crossing from Libya to Sicily or the island of Lampedusa. Among them it is feared may be ISIS terrorists; how to differentiate them from the others desperately seeking to escape their predations?

The concern is real and the potential for the concern to become a nightmare reality is certainly real enough, hovering on the horizon of absolute dread.