ISIS has sleeper cells that are
preparing terrorist attacks in Italy, Germany and Britain, not
just in France and Belgium, James Clapper, the United States
director of national intelligence, told reporters at an
encounter organised on Monday by the Christian Science Monitor.
Clapper said the United States was calling for more
sharing of information between intelligence agencies as a result
and warned that ISIS was exploiting the crisis linked to the
arrival of waves of asylum seekers in Europe.
He said there was a "conflict" between EU rules on free
movement of people and goods and on privacy and nation states'
responsibility to "protect frontiers and the security of their
people".
According to the New York Times, when asked if ISIS was
conducting secret operations in Italy, Germany and Britain,
Clapper said: "yes, it has done. And, naturally, this worries us
and our European allies. We continue to see plots by ISIS in the
countries that you have mentioned".
However, Italian intelligence sources told ANSA on Tuesday
that there is no new terror alarm or concrete indicators that
ISIS is planning attacks in Italy when asked about Clapper's
comments.
The sources said that Italy was, nevertheless, highly
exposed to the risk of attacks, in part because it is the home
of the Vatican.
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