A 48-hour international operation against online terrorism and extremism has seen over 2 000 items assessed as harmful and illegal material with the purpose of referring it to the online service providers  for removal from the internet.

On 25 and 26 April 2017, Europol’s Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) teamed up with colleagues from Belgium, Greece, Poland, Portugal and US  to identify and secure the swift removal of terrorist and violent extremism content online. Hosted at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague, the teams jointly targeted accounts used by terrorist groups to radicalise, recruit, direct terrorist activities.

As a result, 2 068 such pieces of content in 6 languages were accessed for the purpose of referral, hosted on 52 online platforms.

This coordinated hit against online terrorist propaganda focused mainly on the online production of terrorist materials by IS and al-Qaeda affiliated media outlets. Among the items referred were propaganda videos, publications and glorifying or supporting terrorism and extremism.