Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini recently delivered a stark warning: Such was the scale of migration into Italy, he argued, that “Islamic terrorist infiltration is no longer a risk—it has become a certainty.”
Although the vast majority of asylum-seekers in Italy are not security threats, the case of Alagie Touray, a Gambian asylum-seeker arrested in southern Italy in April 2018 on suspicions that he was planning an attack, helped lay the groundwork for Salvini’s case. It also made it easier to justify Italy’s decision to prevent ships containing migrants from docking at Italian ports.
What has gone unsaid, however, is that Italy seems to have largely dodged the carnage Islamist terrorists have afflicted on some of its neighbors.