THE HAGUE, June 23 (Xinhua) -- The terrorist threat level in the Netherlands remains at level four on a scale of five, the Dutch National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism and Security (NCTV) announced in its latest threat assessment report published Friday.
Since March 2013, the threat level in the country has been considered by the NCTV to be substantial, meaning that the chance of an attack is real but there are no specific indications that terrorists are preparing to carry out an attack in the country.
Citing recent attacks in neighboring countries, committed using easily accessible means such as knives and vehicles, the NCTV said that "although there are no concrete indications at this moment, this kind of attack could also occur in the Netherlands."
The report also mentioned that the Dutch jihadist movement, that numbers several hundreds individuals, had been more openly active on social media in recent months after a long period of absence. Their public online activity is mostly related to specific subjects such as the detention of jihadists, but they almost never publicly react to attacks.
Dutch jihadists are also active in secret, closed groups, but these groups use applications that are hard to intercept.
The NCTV remarked that Dutch jihadist networks had also shown little visible activity in the public sphere since the autumn of 2015. Most of the Dutch jihadists seem to know each other through family or friends and it seems that all of them are in some way connected to each other, directly or indirectly, in real life or via the internet.
Until June 2017, a total of around 280 people had left the Netherlands with jihadist intentions. Approximately 190 of them are still in Syria and Iraq, while 45 of them have died. Since the beginning of 2016, the number of people traveling to these countries has dropped, and no new cases have been observed by the services lately.
According to the report, the majority of Dutch jihadists have not turned to violence until now, however this dynamic could change if jihadists return from Syria.
Last year, five people returned from the troubled country, and this year so far one has returned. In total, 50 people have returned to the Netherlands, most of them years ago. Some of them are considered dangerous and are closely monitored.
One remarkable finding in the NCTV report is that only a few of the more than one thousand jihadists who have returned to the European Union (EU) were involved in attacks in Western countries. The returnees who did commit an attack were sent back by the Islamic State (IS) with an assignment to do so.
The threat assessment report also mentioned terrorism by other right-wing extremists, pointing out the attack on a crowd of worshippers near a London mosque on Monday as a probable example. There are no indications of such kinds of extreme-right terrorism in the Netherlands, but the NCTV said it was possible an attack from the right would take place in the country.
