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Greece, US Military Joining Forces in Anti-Terror Exercise on Crete

October 9, 2018

With Prime Minister and Radical Left SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, whose party is riddled with terrorist and anarchist sympatherizers and anti-American sentiment backing off pledges to take Greece out of NATO and end a US military presence, the two countries are teaming up for the largest ever anti-terror exercise in Greece.

It will be held held in December on the island of Crete, Kathimerini said, and will be codenamed Operation Jackal, the annual military operation of the US Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) is organized with the Hellenic Police (ELAS).

It will come despite US ire that SYRIZA approved of furloughs for a mastermind of the former Nov. 17 terrorist group that killed five Americans and saw him being moved to a low-security farm amid speculation he would be eventually released for good, over the anger of the families of his victims and as US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said Greece is a “pillar of stability in the region.”

Greece has a long line of terror groups who occasionally try to hit the US Embassy and with assaults on other targets around the country. The exercise comes during reports there could be Islamist militant plants hidden among the more than 64,000 refugees and migrants being held in detention camps in Greece, including on islands near Turkey, while asylum applications are being processed, which is taking up to two years and longer.

Earlier this month, anti-terror units took part in the investigation of a deadly riot between Afghan and Syrian refugees at a camp in Malakasa outside Athens, due to suspicions that several of those involved were linked to Islamist terrorists.

Unidentified sources told Kathimerini another incident took place at the Skaramangas refugee camp in western Attica in September when a young Iraqi national tried to attack its administrator, a police officer and a security guard with two knives before he was overpowered and arrested. Earlier in the day, he had reportedly flaunted a gun and bullets to other refugees at the camp.

Greek anti-terror units have been closely monitoring refugee camps for suspected Islamist militants, while, since the spring of 2017, the Citizens’ Protection Ministry has deployed foreign nationals at camps in order to collect information on possible terror-related activities, the paper said.

Greek police have been aided by intelligence officers from Europol in monitoring newly-arrived refugees and migrants, while the US Department of Homeland Security has supplied ELAS with a database of some 200,000 suspected terrorists.

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