Security worries prompt new calls

As Europe comes to grip with a spate of terror attacks, some officials and politicians in Switzerland envision a greater role for citizens and the nation’s 26 cantons to keep an eye out for wrongdoing. Some of the cantons and conservative nationalists are pushing to expand their eavesdropping capabilities and their prerogative to repatriate asylum seekers and terror suspects, a leading Swiss weekly newspaper, SonntagsZeitung, reported on Sunday. Recent attacks in France, Belgium and Germany highlight the need to increase monitoring of potential perpetrators and to quickly send suspects back home “even if their security there cannot be absolutely guaranteed”, said Albert Rösti, president of the conservative right Swiss People’s Party. Heightened tension New worries about terrorists living among us with European passports have put a new twist on the debate between civil liberties and national security. Many in Switzerland, however, still recall the major ...