Greek authorities have been struggling to contain the refugee crisis that started a few months ago, when the flow of refugees and migrants coming from the Turkish coast increased significantly. However, monitoring the large number of people who come through the Greek border each day has proven to be a virtually impossible task.
Since the Paris attacks on Friday November 13, security measures have been taken across Europe in order to avoid a second massacre. However, Greece warns that there is now possible way to ensure that no jihadists are passing through the Greek borders. “If they are not already registered in the database, it’s nearly impossible,” says Dimitris Amountzias, police captain in charge of Moria, Greece’s main registration camp on the island of Lesvos, said to AFP.
Jihadists have proven that they can easily bypass the seemingly detailed security checks performed in Greece’s numerous detention centers by agents of the European border agency Frontex.
“The unchecked flow poses an unequaled challenge for European security,” added a European security expert.
It was reported by French authorities that two of the terrorists had passed through Greece before participating in the bombing attacks. Furthermore, authorities had also been searching for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind behind the operation, in Greece in January 2015.
The police chief insisted that the officers in Greece are doing their best to register every single migrant under the current European guidelines. “There isn’t a single officer here who would let a migrant through without first taking their fingerprints,” he stressed. Meanwhile, the Greek Alternate Interior Minister Nikos Toskas made a similar statement during a meeting in Brussels. “External borders are checked. The refugees are checked and identified under European rules,” he said.
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