Extremism

A year after Paris attacks, Europe’s extremism problem shows no signs of going away

A little-noticed leak of documents recently documented hundreds of fighters who came back to Europe as early as 2014. The Islamic State appears to have kept track of the details of some the returning fighters, including reasons for the departure.

Meanwhile, European intelligence agencies still struggle to keep up. The number of arrests has risen sharply, but many returnees have so far escaped punishment, partially due to a lack of evidence of what exactly they did in Syria or Iraq.
"There still is no police force which is allowed to conduct investigations across European borders," said Nils Duqet, a Brussels-based researcher. For many European agencies, the November attacks in Paris were nevertheless a wake-up call. Previously, they had mostly refrained from even sharing data on foreign fighters.