Norway hunting for 20 Syrian war criminals who entered the country as refugees

ByPAMELA GELLER on January 18, 2016
NORWAY 
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This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the near future, hunting for criminals and terrorists among the refugees will require the full energy of European police forces, to the extent that they won’t have time for anything else. European nations have signed their own death warrant.
ISIS-refugees-622513
“Norway searches for Syrian war criminals,” Daily Star, January 16, 2016 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
OSLO/BERLIN: Norwegian police are looking at 20 suspected war criminals from Syria, following tips from refugees and local immigration authorities, a police official said.
Some 10,500 Syrian asylum-seekers reached Norway in 2015, a third of all the country’s asylum-seekers last year.
“We are taking a closer look at around 20 individuals, and we are currently assessing whether there is a basis to start an investigation,” Sigurd Moe, the superintendent of the war crimes section of the National Criminal Investigation Service, said in an interview.
“It is people from both sides of the conflict. Both people we think have been on [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s side and individuals from the rebellions,” he said. The police had yet to decide whether to open formal proceedings.
Norwegian police have been investigating suspected war criminals since 2005, but until now most have been from countries like Rwanda and Sri Lanka, where conflicts have ceased, making it easier to conduct investigations.
“What is new now is that we have decided to use a lot of resources on uncovering war criminals among the refugees arriving now,” Moe said. “We are spending a lot of resources on finding these people, because we don’t want them to wander freely around the streets of Norway.”
Tips from refugees have increased as the number of refugees has grown, he said. They amounted to about 100 tips over the past six months. “It can be anything from belonging to a military faction which we know has been committing serious crimes, or it may be other concrete tips that go for a more specific crime.”
Suspicions of war crimes were often triggered by pictures or videos on refugees’ mobile phones, which are screened by local police upon arrival, he said. The material sometimes boasted of crimes being committed, he said.
But tips also come from other refugees who might have personal motives for reporting the person.
“There can be different motives for reporting people, and in most cases it is probably because that person has done it, but there can also be personal motives, and that is something we would have to investigate,” Moe said. Several web pages existed accusing people of being war criminals, he added.
Germany followed a similar course of action as the head of German police said Friday that more than 400 potential Islamist militant fighters are being watched.
Holger Muench, president of the BKA federal police, told ARD television that the number of people leaving Germany for Syria and Iraq to fight with militant groups such as Daesh (ISIS) was dropping.
But there has been a simultaneous rise in the number of fighters returning home.
“The wave of departures is becoming flatter,” he said. “In the meantime, we have more than 400 individuals who pose a threat and whom we must keep an eye on.”
Muench said, however, that the suicide bombing in Istanbul this week in which 10 German tourists were killed was not a sign that the threat of a militant attack in Germany was higher than before.