Yachties at risk as Isis takes to the sea

LUXURY yachts and other shipping in the Mediterranean could come under attack

from heavily armed Isis fighters using speedboats to conduct attacks from

the Libyan coast, a former Royal Navy admiral warned this weekend.

Rear Admiral Chris Parry said he feared the “super-rich” could be singled out

as part of a piracy campaign that would threaten shipping from Gibraltar to

Greece.

“Yachting, any leisure activity, is going to be under threat,” he said.

“If I were the likes of the super-rich I would be getting a bit concerned

about my physical security.”

Isis pirates would pose a greater danger than the Somalis who have attacked

shipping in the Indian Ocean because they are better armed.

“You are going to get them turning up with surface-to-air missiles.

Helicopters are going to come down if you are not careful,” Parry said,

adding that Isis would have an “endless supply” of fighters and weapons from

Syria and Libya.

This is not the first time Parry has highlighted the vulnerability of shipping

in the Mediterranean to potential terrorist attacks. A former head of the

Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, a Ministry of Defence (MoD) think

tank, he published a report in 2006 warning north African “barbary pirates”

could attack yachts and beaches in the Mediterranean within 10 years.

Parry claims to have been reprimanded at the time by a senior figure in the

MoD for emphasising the dangers to European security posed by migration and

was told not to repeat his claims.

His concerns were echoed last week by Admiral Jim Stavridis, a former Nato

supreme allied commander Europe, who said Italy was particularly exposed to

“extremely high” risk.

“The Isis fighters can either slip in with the waves of illegal migrants or

they can simply hire a boat and come ashore on one of the islands,” he

cautioned.

Stavridis suggested that Italy could convene a meeting under article 4 of the

north Atlantic treaty, which allows any Nato member to consult its allies

whenever it believes that “the territorial integrity, political independence

or security of any of the parties is threatened”.

“The Italians have got to be there but it needs to be more than just Italy, it

really has got to be Nato,” Stavridis said.