© Fotoarena / Global Look Press
"There is a danger of camps in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean for training jihadists, establishing ties between terrorists and local criminal and drug syndicates. We are concerned about the activation of recruiting activities of extremists, especially in the Caribbean states, where the share of citizens professing Islam is high," he said, speaking at the 18th session of the Inter-American Committee on Combating Terrorism.
Later, in his communication with journalists, Feoktistov emphasised that the cases of recruitment are still small in number. "But we do not want it to grow into an epidemic," the diplomat added.
He noted that it is better to work ahead of them. In this regard, Feoktistov put forward a number of proposals to the participants of the event. In particular, he called for joining the FBI International Data Bank on Countering Terrorism, which contains information on 89 terrorist organizations and more than 11,000 foreign terrorist.
Feoktistov stressed that Russia is ready to facilitate the training of intelligence officers, and also called on the participating countries to consider the possibility of joining the SCO Convention on Countering Extremism.
Comment: Latin America already has its own "ISIS" in the form of drug cartels. As for the real ISIS, it's hard to see how it could grow roots in a continent where more than 90% of the population has been raised as christians.