The Southwestern Finland Police Department (Lounais-Suomen poliisilaitos), supported by the Finnish Security Service (Suojelupoliisi) and Europol, has dismantled a right-wing extremist cell suspected of preparing a crime with terrorist intent. On the action day, law enforcement authorities raided the houses of the five suspects and successfully arrested all of them. The five individuals appeared at the Satakunta District Court on December 3 and have been remanded in custody.
Police had previously seized several firearms and material potentially used for explosives from the suspects almost two years ago. Since then, Finnish authorities, supported by Europol, investigated the right-wing extremist group, which is composed of Finnish males in their mid-twenties from the city Kankaanpää, Satakunta region. During their two-year investigation, police also found right-wing extremism material.
During the investigation, Europol facilitated the information exchange and supported the case with operational analysis. On the action day, Europol deployed four experts to Finland to support the field activities. These experts provided technical expertise on the identification of extremist material and specialized analysis of the evidence discovered during police raids. A Virtual Command Post was also activated to enable the real time crosschecking of operational information against Europol’s databases.
Read the announcement at Europol
