While politicians and journalists rush to tell Europeans that rejecting mass migration from Muslim countries “is what ISIS wants”, police in Italy and France are investigating Mohamed Bouhlel’s links to No Borders activism.
Police are looking into videos uploaded by No Borders activists of sit-ins and rallies in Ventimiglia, as among the protesters is a man who they believe could be the Nice attacker who pledged allegiance to ISIS and slaughtered 84 people earlier this month.
Italian police have confirmed that they already identified the terrorist as having been in Ventimiglia during clashes in June last year. The authorities are looking into contacts Mr. Bouhlel has in Italy. The Tunisian was stopped and identified in a routine check just metres from Ponte San Ludovico, where left wing activists were demanding Europe open its borders.
Last year it emerged that a No Borders activist stationed at Ponte San Ludovico, in Ventimiglia, was gang raped by African migrants but kept quiet about it for a month. Her fellow protesters convinced her not to report the attack as they feared it would set back their dream of a borderless world.
The headline of the website of No Borders Ventimiglia reads: “From Lampedusa to Calais we will not go back!” and condemns the fact that migrants are “not free to move around Europe in search of a better life”.
The website states that the group’s goal is for people to be allowed to live wherever they choose. The activists say that Europe should not distinguish between “economic migrants” and “refugees”, and instead provide “basic needs” of “earnings, a house and healthcare” to everyone who wants to come.
The news of the ISIS terrorist’s links to open borders activism has already inflamed the political debate in Italy. Liguria governor Giovanni Toti, wrote on Facebook: “The Nice killer was in Ventimiglia at a demonstration in favour of migrants. Does anyone still defend the indiscriminate reception?”
The right wing Northern League party’s Liguria branch called for “more stringent controls, and not only on illegal aliens but also on their supporters”.
The news that Mr. Bouhlel may have been involved in open borders activism contradicts the narrative repeated by Western journalists and politicians in the wake of an onslaught of Islamic terror attacks in Europe.
Former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, said that closed borders in Europe would fuel more terrorism, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that ISIS’ goal is to break down Europeans’ “willingness and openness” to take in millions of migrants.
Writing for the European Council of Foreign relations, Mattia Toaldo claimed that: “European xenophobes and the so-called Islamic State have a shared goal: stopping the migration of Muslims to Europe”. Similarly, an article in the Independent this week argued that Angela Merkel’s “open-door immigration approach” was the best way to protect the country from terror attacks. Germany this month saw four horrific attacks in the space of a week, three of which were done by recent migrants.
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