Prague, March 3 (CTK) – The Czech Republic is a transit country for people who seek participation in activities of the Islamic State (IS) militant group, according to a report on home security in 2015 that is available to CTK.
The Interior Ministry sent the report to other state bodies and asked them for comments, which is a standard procedure. The government is expected to discuss the report in a few weeks.
The Czech police registered several cases of IS supporters travelling via the Prague airport. Some of the persons were arrested and handed to their home countries for prosecution, the report says.
Some of the suspected IS supporters stayed in the Czech Republic for a short time.
However, no open action of international terrorism was registered last year, the report says.
The BIS counter-intelligence focused on individuals who could have been influenced by IS propaganda, such as volunteers who left for the Middle East or advocates of Islamic ideologies, the report says in its section on terrorism.
A circle of a few persons, who seemed to be under a strong influence of the IS propaganda and who left the country after their short stay in order to take part in the fighting in Syria and Iraq, was comprised of people who came from the Islamic world, the report says.
After the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka indicated that militant Islamists travelled from the Middle East to Western Europe, or in the opposite direction, via the Czech Republic. French media reported then that some Jihadists travelled via Prague to avoid being revealed.
Sobotka said reports from the intelligence services indicated that the Czech Republic is used as a transit country by terrorists. However, the Czech Republic was far from being the only such country, he added.
According to the report, BIS registered several cases of supporters of the Islamic State ideology or of similar ideologies in the Czech territory. This support was presented on social networking websites, but it did not lead to any violent actions or any efforts to join IS, the report says.
