The Polish government has claimed to have evidence of Islamic radicalism among migrants crossing its border illegally from Belarus, while others have accused the country of “Islamophobia”.
Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński stated that the government had evidence from migrant mobile phones of Islamic extremism that included text messages and other materials such as photos.
“(The situation is) extremely tense…I will apply to the Council of Ministers (cabinet) for an extension of the state of emergency by 60 days,” Minister Kamiński said earlier this week, Reuters reports.
Polish television broadcaster Polsat News has claimed that photos from an SD card were presented by the spokesman for the coordinator of special services, Stanisław Żaryn, which showed executions and beheadings.
“Among the photos obtained from an Afghan citizen, executions by decapitation were shown, as well as the bodies of murdered people and photos of an arsenal of machine guns,” Żaryn said.
Minister Kamiński stated on Monday that around 200 migrants had been examined by the security services so far and many had also hidden their identities or presented false documentation to Polish authorities.
“In 50 people, materials were found proving radicalism, proving that they are young people, trained in combat, who took part in various types of armed formations in the Middle East,” he said.
“We will explain whether the person who had photos and videos from the decapitation, i.e. from cutting off the head of the victim, was a direct witness and participant of this event and for what purpose he kept these materials. Each of these threads will be explained and some of them will end up in the prosecutor’s office,” Kamiński added.
Kamiński also noted that in at least one case, child pornography and bestiality pornography were found in the possession of one of the migrants.
Opposition politicians in Poland, meanwhile, have claimed that the press conference conducted by Kamiński was an example of Islamophobia, according to the Independent news website.
Since the start of September, an estimated 5,000 migrants have attempted to illegally cross the border from Belarus to Poland, according to Polish border officials.
Authorities have also recently arrested six people accused of helping migrants to cross: two Syrians with German residency, two Poles, a Belarusian, and an Azerbaijani.
Faced with a mini-migrant crisis, Poland declared a 30-day state of emergency in Podlaskie and Lubelskie, the two regions that border Belarus. The state of emergency was the first declared since the fall of the former Polish communist regime.
Belarusian authorities have been accused of purposely helping migrants cross in the European Union illegally in both Poland and Lithuania in what is seen as retaliation for sanctions imposed by the European Union.
Some reports have even claimed that Belarusian officers had forced migrants to cross the borders at gunpoint and had fired into the air to encourage them to cross the border.