Police remove more than 1,000 terror chant videos being used by extremists to woo recruits

Music company helps crime agency to locate radicalisation footage

More than 1,000 terrorist videos were taken down by Europol. Reuters

Europe's crime agency has taken down more than 1,000 extremist videos in a crackdown on terrorists using terror chants to attract new recruits.

Europol has teamed up with music entertainment company SoundCloud to help identify Islamist and far-right music videos on the internet.

Six countries were involved in the initiative with Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC), which targeted terrorist and extremist audio content online.

"In collaboration with the music entertainment company SoundCloud, the participating countries and the ECTC’s European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU-IRU) detected and assisted the company to scour illegally uploaded jihadist, right-wing terrorist and violent extremist propaganda," Europol said.

"Some 1,100 profiles and audio files assessed as illegal were flagged to SoundCloud. Upon review, SoundCloud deleted the reported files.

"Among the referred content were jihadist chants in several languages as well as audio fragments promoting violent and right-wing extremist groups. Some of these materials had already amassed several thousand hits and audio streams."

The action day was led by the German Federal Criminal Police Office and the EU-IRU, with the involvement of law enforcement authorities from Denmark, Hungary, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.

"It is part of an ongoing public-private partnership between SoundCloud, law enforcement agencies and Europol aiming at addressing the terrorist abuse of the internet, preventing online radicalisation and safeguarding fundamental rights," Europol said.