Would-be jihadi fighters are booking cruise ship tickets to get to battle zones in Syria and Iraq, Interpol officials told the Associated Press on Thursday.
The fighters are adapting after recent Turkish efforts to restrict their movement, as well as airports more actively monitoring for potential jihadis.
Ronald Noble, the outgoing head of Interpol, told the AP of increased reports of would-be fighters “using cruise ships in order to get to launch pads, if you will — sort of closer to the conflict zones — of Syria and Iraq.”
Interpol operates a pilot program that allows airlines to check passenger information against its databases. It says it’s hoping to expand the program to cruise lines, hotels and banks.
As of late September, the Interpol database listed 1,300 foreign fighters from 33 countries, according to the AP.
“The question is how we can prevent that travel and disrupt that travel,” Noble told the AP in September. “Interpol’s idea is to get airlines involved, hotels involved, banks involved, cruise lines involved — to make it more difficult for these terrorists to use stolen documents with different identifies in order to move from one country to the next.”
