Authorities in several European nations arrested more than a dozen people Thursday accused of having connections with a terror group that allegedly aims to help ISIS take over Kurdish portions of Iraq, Italian authorities said.
The coordinated arrests in Italy, the United Kingdom and Norway targeted alleged members of Rawti Shax, a Kurdish-Sunni Islamist terror group, according to Eurojust, the judicial cooperation arm of the European Union.
That group essentially is an offshoot of Ansar al Islam, an al Qaeda-linked jihadist network that played a role in an Iraqi insurgency last decade. Some Ansar members migrated to Europe after they were flushed out of the area, formed Rawti Shax and recently aligned more with al Qaeda’s rival, ISIS, Italian prosecutors told reporters Thursday.
The group was active “in providing logistical and financial support to recruiting foreign terrorist fighters to be sent to Syria and Iraq, also with the intent of training them for (a) future conflict” in Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region, Eurojust said.
At least 13 people were arrested Thursday, Eurojust said, while Italian prosecutors indicated at least four other arrest warrants had been issued, with police also conducting searches of premises in Finland, Germany and Switzerland.
Most of those arrested were members of the Kurdish ethnic group, according to Italian prosecutors who briefed reporters on the operation. The arrests were directed by prosecutors in Rome with cooperation with counterparts in other nations.
Prosecutors said Italian police began an investigation in 2010 with surveillance of websites.
“(Rawti Shax’s) primary objective is to violently overthrow” the Kurdish leaders who control the current autonomous region in northern Iraq and replace them “with a caliphate governed by Sharia law,” Eurojust said in a news release.
“Some suspects could not be found, as they are believed to have traveled to the Middle East (Syria and Iraq) to join jihadist organizations,” including ISIS, Eurojust said.
ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, captured parts of Syria and Iraq for what it calls its Islamic caliphate. In Iraq, one of the forces opposing ISIS is the Peshmerga, the Kurdish troops who defend the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq.
On Thursday, the Peshmerga, backed by air support from a U.S.-led coalition, launched an offensive to take back the Iraqi town of Sinjar from ISIS.