"The number of foreign terrorists is very high" in war-ravaged Syria and neighboring Iraq, said Jean-Paul Laborde, UN assistant secretary general and head of its Counter-Terrorism Committee, Swiss Info reported.
"There are nearly 30,000, and now that the territory held by ISIS is shrinking in Iraq, we are seeing them return, not only to Europe but to all of their countries of origin, like Tunisia, Morocco," he told reporters in Geneva.
"The terrorist attacks in those countries of origin risk getting bigger and bigger to counter-balance the pressure on them" on the ground in Syria and Iraq, he said.
Laborde urged countries to put in place a "filter system to distinguish between the large majority of returning foreign fighters, who are not dangerous... and those who are."
The former French judge also stressed that the international community had the judicial tools to fight against terrorism, but warned that "the adaptability and flexibility of terrorist organizations are much faster than ours."
To compensate for the slowness of judicial systems, he called for more cooperation with internet giants like Google, Twitter and Microsoft to help keep tabs on potential terrorists online.
He insisted though that this needed to be done without "violating freedom of expression." Laborde also called on states to share more information faster. "If we don't do that, we will continue to see a growing number of terrorist acts," he said.
The Counter-Terrorism Committee, made up of representatives of the UN Security Council member states, was created in New York following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
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