Romania Bans Seven Foreigners from Returning over Links to IS, al-Qaeda

Seven foreign nationals accused of recruiting members for extremist Islamic groups and propagating their ideas have been banned from returning to Romania, AFP has reported.

The Bucharest court of appeal last week decided in separate rulings that the seven should be banned from re-entering Romania for periods of three to seven years, AFP said, citing a statement of Romania's domestic intelligence agency SRI.

Six of the foreign nationals formed a group "affiliated to radical ideologies of the Al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorist groups". The six also conducted "Islamic extremist propaganda (and) recruitment for religious and military training in conflict zones affected by terrorism," according to the statement. The SRI also said the six were working for companies with foreign capital and had been under surveillance since 2013.

The nationality of the six was not announced. The seventh, a Tunisian national, had consistently tried to attract new supporters and expressed "a wish to become a martyr" for a terror group.