General CT in Europe (catch all)

[Jedburgh]

The first EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report TE-SAT 2007 produced by Europol was presented 10 April 2007 in the European Parliament in Brussels.

The report identifies three continuing trends within terrorism in EU countries: separatism, anarchism and Islamic extremism. While the vast majority of terrorist attacks reported in Europe in 2006 were separatist in nature, the largest number of arrests were linked to Islamic extremists. The report indicates that France, Spain and the UK are the countries most severely affected by terrorism, and that most terrorist incidents in Europe are designed to avoid human casualties.

The largest single category of incidents in 2006 was separatist attacks in France and the largest single category of arrests was also of separatists in France; nearly all related to the island of Corsica. Separatist attacks in Spain accounted for over one hundred incidents, despite the ceasefire maintained by Basque separatist group ETA during most of the year. Coming in a distant third in number of incidents was left-wing/anarchist attacks in Greece. At the bottom of the list were Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia, who all reported neither investigations nor court proceedings related to terrorism in 2006, suggesting that they are the least affected by terrorism in the region.

[Sarajevo071]

Some very interesting info there. Thank you.

[Jedburgh]

Commentary in response to the Europol EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report linked at the top of the thread:

GEES, 16 Jul 07: Europe and the Nature of the Terrorist Threat in 2007

...It is worth noting in considering these facts and figures that Europol is not privy to the full range of information available from member states on terrorist attacks and incidents, primarily because some states such as the UK are reluctant to share details of ongoing operations, including arrests of suspects. The recently departed Director-General of the UK’s Security Service has suggested there are approximately 200 active Islamist jihadist networks active in Britain, comprising 30 known plots, and involving 1600 identified individuals. These statistics should be considered in con-junction with those made available to Europol.....