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Refugees: a political threat

01 March 1993

With the passing of the Cold War, Europe's security services have begun targeting refugee and asylum groups as the new "enemy within". The current issue of CARF magazine documents this development in a special survey: "The making of terrorists and dissidents: Europe's new war on the Third World".

Among the cases cited is that of the "Mucadele 5" in Berne, Switzerland. On 14 January 1992 riot police raided the offices of the socialist, Turkish-Kurdish journal "Mucadele" and arrested 26 people including women and children. Five were charged, and the public prosecutor said that they were suspected of blackmailing people to give money to Dev-Sol (Kurdish communists) and implied they were involved in drug trafficking. At their trial, in December 1992, the case collapsed for lack of evidence after police witnesses cited rightwing paper as sources and the Federal Attorney's Office admitted they had no information on Mucadele or Dev-Sol activists. Observers suspected that the Turkish secret service, MIT, had a hand in the press coverage, raid and charges.

Abdennacer Ben Yussef, a metal worker, resident with his wife and children in Parma, Italy disappeared without trace. He had gone to the police station to renew his residence permit and never returned. Weeks later his wife found out that he had been expelled from Italy to Tunisia on grounds of national security. Ben Yussef had no criminal record and had never been a member of a Tunisian opposition group - he was a member of the legal Union of Tunisian Immigrant Workers. In Tunisia he was imprisoned and tortured. He has since escaped and his case has been taken up by Amnesty International and the civil rights group, Senza Confine.