Europol is to run a new specialist unit to monitor and shut down social media accounts used by the militant group calling itself Islamic State.
The Europe-wide police unit will aim to track the propaganda and messages that attracts new adherents from European countries.
The Europol database already has some 6,000 names of foreign fighters who have gone to Iraq and Syria. An estimated 700 people from the UK are believed to be in Syria.
Analysts believe there are some 40-50,000 jihadi Twitter accounts, often posting several times a day. A number of experts have pointed out the adept use Islamic State makes of social media.
The unit will model itself on the UK’s Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit which searches the internet for relevant posts and askes social media firms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to remove them.
Over the last few years, it has had 75,000 items removed from the internet, according to the Financial Times.
The work, which at last represents more of a European effort than just individual countries, will begin on 1 July.
