How Crime and Terror Have Merged
European Jihadists and the New Crime-Terror Nexus
A think piece for the ESPAS 2016 conference by Rajan Basra (@rajanbasra), Research Fellow, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation & Peter R. Neumann (@PeterRNeumann), Professor of Security Studies and Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (@ICSR_Centre), both at King’s College London.
The conventional wisdom used to be that terrorists are middle-class and educated. In October 2016, the World Bank published a study according to which the majority of Islamic State fighters were better educated than their peers. But the picture among European jihadists is strikingly different. Far from being middle-class, they are at home in the ghettos of big cities like Paris and Brussels, and many of them have criminal pasts.
Khalid el-Bakraoui, who blew himself up in a Brussels metro station in March 2016, was previously involved in bank robberies and carjackings. Brahim Abdeslam, one of the suicide attackers during the November 2015 attacks in Paris, had a history of drug trafficking and robbery. And the three jihadists involved in the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015 were robbers, fraudsters, and counterfeiters.
This is no mere coincidence. As we demonstrate in a recently published report, throughout Europe, criminals have been drawn to jihadism. Two-thirds of German foreign fighters had criminal records. According to Belgium’s Federal Prosecutor, half of his country’s jihadists had criminal records prior to leaving for Syria. And officials from Norway and the Netherlands have told us that ‘at least 60 percent’ of their jihadists have been involved in crime. No wonder, then, that the Islamic State has been labelled ‘a sort of super-gang’.
What is it that they find so appealing in extremism? In our examination of 79 European jihadists with criminal backgrounds, we saw that they often searched for ‘redemption’ from their past sins. Jihadism offers them the chance to wipe the slate clean. This typically followed on from a shocking event or personal crisis — what Quintan Wiktorowicz has termed a ‘cognitive opening’ — which prompted them to reassess their life, and become open to new ideas and beliefs.
Our examination reveals another worrying trend: that jihadism licenses the use of crime. From senior leaders within the jihadist scene, down to street-level supporters, there is the idea that anything taken from the disbelievers is simply ghanima, or the ‘spoils of war’. Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda leader who was killed in a US drone attack in 2011, infamously justified this in his ‘Ruling on dispossessing the disbelievers’ wealth in Dar al-Harb (the lands of war)’. Islamic State has even issued instructions in its magazines advising would-be jihadists to commit white-collar crime, by forging payslips and taking out credit from banks. It seems that jihadists, therefore, are actively encouraged to commit crimes.
One of most effective examples of this was Khalid Zerkani, who became an influential figure in the Molenbeek jihadist scene prior to his 2014 arrest for terrorist-related offences. He encouraged a gang of young men to rob tourists in Brussels, and would then distribute the proceeds amongst the group, earning him the nickname Papa Noël (Father Christmas). Speaking at his trial, one witness said that Zerkani told the young men that ‘to steal from the infidels is permitted by Allah’.
This religious veneer, combined with Zerkani’s charisma, was massively influential: he was responsible for upwards of 70 men mobilising to Syria. Amongst his recruits was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who helped coordinate the attacks in Paris. This phenomenon is worrying, as it offers criminals an opportunity for ‘redemption’ without requiring any change in their behaviour. It simply repurposes crime, under a religious sanction.
There are a number of steps that can be taken to counteract this nexus of crime and terrorism. Above all, we need to re-think radicalisation, as the behaviour of those who adopt extremist ideas does not always match up to long-held notions about displays of religion. Being ‘pious’ is no guarantee that criminal behaviour has stopped, while acting like a ‘gangster’ does not preclude involvement in terrorism. Countering terrorist financing should also target all streams of financing, including small-scale, petty crime, and illicit trade such as counterfeiting. As the Mayor of Molenbeek, Francoise Schepmans, has recently said, radicalisation thrives on other forms of criminality, and it may be wise to first target lower offences.
