Jihadist websites make recruiting terrorists easy

Well censorship shouldnt be a problem ! But what about right to expression and right to freedom, hell man when people are dying do we discuss all that. Its war! NEWS

A RETIRED FBI boss says that more than 10,000 recruiting websites mean anyone can easily become a radical terrorist.

The websites, specialising in recruiting and cultivating Jihadists, made the terror threat more invisible than ever before, Thomas Fuentes said.

The retired assistant FBI director – and current member of the Interpol executive – was on the Gold Coast yesterday when more than 250 delegates from 22 countries visited the strip for the FBI National Academy Associates Conference.

Mr Fuentes said Australia – with its natural beauty, natural resources and successful economy – would always be a target of terrorist threats.

But, he added, the internet – with its ease of anonymous communication and the advent of thousands of Jihadist websites – had created a drastic change in terms of the "ease" of finding new terrorists.

He said the internet and the surge in global online communication had magnified the terrorism threat a thousand-fold by making the recruits and the recruiting agents invisible.

"A person can be in their own home and become radicalised without even meeting another person face to face," Mr Fuentes said. "Before they would have to go to where others gathered that had a similar extremist philosophy – previously others would have to personally recruit people to join their terrorist philosophy.

"Now you can be groomed to be a murderer without leaving home. The difficulty of fighting that is huge."

Mr Fuentes said that was compounded by the fact 2500 of Indonesia's 17,500 islands were uninhabited.

"This gives them very fertile ground for the recruitment of potential terrorists and the ability to train them in an environment where it was almost impossible for the Indonesian (or) international police to monitor," he said.

The Interpol executive stopped short of predicting it was only a matter of time before Australia became victim of a terrorist attack, but said: "It is fair to say that there are groups out there attempting to commit these attacks on a regular basis though."

Queensland Police Minister Neil Roberts rejected the suggestion that holding the FBI conference in southeast Queensland heightened the area's risk of terror attacks.

"All nations, including ours, have to be constantly and eternally vigilant for terrorism and international crime," Mr Roberts said.

"This conference is an opportunity to learn about the skills of international players."