It wasn’t a coincidence that ISIS mentioned Hungary in its latest threatening message  

As Daily News Hungary recently reported, ISIS has threatened several countries a couple of days ago in a message via social media saying “Today it’s Brussels and its airport, but tomorrow it could be Portugal or Hungary.” According to György Bakondi, the Hungarian government is taking this threat seriously, and secret service sources say that mentioning Hungary was not just a coincidence, nol.hu writes.  

ISIS has recently threatened Europe and the United States in two messages via social media, stating that the Brussels attack was just the beginning of an invasion that is going to go through Europe and the United States.

It is still unclear whether the organization only mentioned Hungary to extend the number of countries that are threatened, or, if they are really planning on carrying out various attacks in Hungary as well. However, nol.hu was informed by trustworthy sources that the Hungarian secret service has got hold of information that makes the latter also possible.

The announcement that György Bakondi, chief security policy advisor to the Prime Minister, made on Wednesday, reinforces this claim. Bakondi said that the government takes ISIS’ message seriously, analyses and evaluates it, like any other matter concerning domestic security. Bakondi also asked the oppositions parties to put everyday political issues aside and help to find a solution to the matter.

The ministry would convert the Coordination Centre Against Organized Crime that was founded at the end of the 1990s into the Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Analysis Centre (TIBEK), which is nicknamed as “Anti-Mafia Centre” by the public.

The Centre was first founded to put an end to parallel investigations, because it happened that different organizations were looking for the same criminal organizations. TIBEK would go a step further, and would not only coordinate the work of the police and the Constitution Protection Office, but the work of all investigative authorities.

A good example of different authorities not working together is the case of the migrant wave that should have been coming from Romania; however, this information was not verified, and no migrants have come from the Temesvár area.

László Tasnádi, Minister of State for Law Enforcement from the Ministry of Interior, emphasized that in the 1970s such accusations did not happen because a central database existed, and was available for everyone. Representatives of different authorities admitted that “in Hungary, it would be hard to find out at 2 am what the authorities know about a person who is suspected to be a terrorist.” If there is any data on the suspect, the person in charge might not be available, but even if he is, it’s impossible to give data away without asking permission from his superior etc. These obstacles should be abolished by TIBEK.

Tasnádi also said that because secret services matters are a national issue, without a common interest, European countries cannot work together. It was also revealed that Hungarian secret services do not have the means and the capacity to monitor the phones and computers of every citizen, and terrorists and criminals are better equipped. Nevertheless, services would like to monitor popular applications used for communication in real time mainly by younger people, but all the manufacturers have said no.

Many have criticized TEK’s presence (Counter Terrorism Centre) in public areas, but according to János Hajdu, director general of TEK, the closeness of the officers was necessary, so in the event of a terrorist attack they should be nearby and act immediately.

Photo: MTI

Copy editor: bm

Source: nol.hu