Lessons from Italy’s use of expulsions as a counterterrorism tool
By Dr. Lorenzo Vidino
The use of expulsions for terrorism and national security-related reasons has often generated heated debates in most Western countries. Authorities have often tried to use them to remove from their national territory individuals considered a threat but who, for whatever reason, cannot be charged. But many of these efforts have often met not just the criticism of human rights activists but also stiff legal challenges. Notorious, in this regard, is the case of Abu Qatada, an al Qaeda-affiliated militant commonly described as “Bin Laden’s ambassador to Europe,” whom British authorities managed to deport to Jordan in 2013 after a decade-long and extremely complex legal battle.
Italy is a country that notoriously has not been timid in using immigration tools but, rather, has made them a cornerstone of its counterterrorism strategy. Last week, in a speech for the celebration of the 174th anniversary of the foundation of the Italian police, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi revealed that, over the last three years, Italy had expelled 239 individuals for national security reasons. This is an average of 80 individuals a year, one every 4.5 days.
These are incredibly high numbers if compared to any other Western country. The one exception might be France, which just in the first 8 months of last year expelled 64 individuals for terrorism-related matters. But while these high numbers are something new for France, following recent legislative changes, Italy has a long track record of aggressively relying on expulsions. These measures, in fact, were first introduced in 2005 and then tweaked several times over the years. Italy, the only large Western country not to have ever suffered a successful jihadist attack, has a robust counterterrorism apparatus, which draws heavily in terms of laws and professional experience of its apparatuses, from the country’s history of fighting both domestic terrorism and organized crime. The use of expulsions is a fitting addition to a country that has historically adopted a tough approach towards terrorism.
And, interestingly, their application enjoys a remarkably bipartisan consensus. Piantedosi highlighted how the 239 expulsions of the last three years - since October 2022, when he became Minister in the then nascent Meloni government - constituted a 40% increase in comparison to the three previous years. But this result seems to have little to do of the political orientation of the current and the previous governments. Rather, there seems to be a direct - and logical - correlation between the security environment and the number of expulsions.
Tellingly, in fact, comparable and even higher numbers were seen in 2016 (66 expulsions), 2017 (105) and 2018 (at least 112), years in which Italy was ruled by center -left coalitions. What instead explains the swings is, as said, the threat scenario. The years 2016-18 constitute the peak of the ISIS-linked threat to Italy and Europe, therefore pushing Italian authorities to use the instrument against a large number of suspects. As the ISIS-linked threat declined, so did expulsions. Numbers have gone steadily up in light of the enhanced concerns related to the post October 7 environment and what Italian security services assess being a more severe threat of radicalization in Italy.
As the work of the Italian government’s Commission on Jihadist Radicalization (2016-18), which I had the privilege of chairing, made clear, Italian authorities find the instrument particularly useful because of its speed and wide application potential. As for the first, it is noteworthy that the law authorizes the Minister of Interior to expel individuals who are deemed to be a security threat to the country through an administrative act that is routinely implemented hours after its signing, making the expulsion process a fast affair largely external to the court system.
Moreover, Italian authorities can use the instrument more broadly than most of their Western counterparts because the majority of Italian jihadists do not possess Italian passports. Italian law, in fact, makes naturalization relatively difficult and, most relevantly, does not automatically grant citizenship to individuals born in Italy if both parents are foreign. While many critics have highlighted the negative implications on integration and even radicalization of this approach, from a strictly counterterrorism perspective it is something that allows Italian authorities to target a substantial number of suspects.
Broadly speaking, three categories of individuals are targeted by the instrument:
Individuals who are known to authorities as radicalized but have not committed any criminal act and therefore cannot be arrested. This dynamic is very common throughout the West, often leading to severe criticism of authorities when one of these “known radicals” moves from thoughts and words to actions and carries out an attack - as it often happens in a quick and unpredictable way. Italian authorities argue that, if the suspect is not an Italian citizen, it is reckless to see whether that person might or might not move to violence and they rather deport.
“Cattivi maestri” or bad teachers, charismatic preachers who might not carry out any criminal activity and might have no intention to be directly involved in terrorism but who, by virtue of their status, attract people around themselves and radicalize them. Expelling them, argue Italian authorities, is one of the main reasons why Italy’s jihadist scene is substantially smaller than that of many other European countries.
Individuals released from prison after having served their sentence for terrorism - related convictions or for unrelated ones but who display signs of radicalization.
Critics have pointed to various issues in Italy’s reliance on expulsion, from its potential civil rights violation and diminished due process to the general idea of “dumping” radicalized individuals on other countries even if, in many cases, the individual’s radicalization happened in Italy and not in the receiving country.
Italian authorities are also aware that expulsions cannot be the end-all and be-all of counterterrorism. More and more radicalized individuals are Italian citizens and it is not unlikely that, in a not so distant future, citizenship laws could be drastically changed. Despite all these criticisms and limitations, expulsions remain an important arrow in the Italian counterterrorism quiver, and one that many European countries look at with a degree of envy.