Daesh Recruiting Violent Criminals across Europe in Dangerous New ‘Crime-Terror Nexus’

The poster was shared on Facebook by Rayat al-Tawheed, a group of British Daesh fighters from London calling themselves the “Banner of God”.

Their target is young men looking for redemption from crime, drugs or gangs, willing to save their souls by waging war for Daesh.

For all of its professed piousness, new research shows that the majority of the terrorist group’s recruits have criminal histories – an unprecedented figure for former radical movements emphasizing purity and scholarly knowledge.

A report by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) shows that criminal and terrorist networks across Europe are merging to create a dangerous brand of radical people for whom violence is not just a holy pursuit, but a way of life.

Professor Peter Neumann, director of the ICSR at King’s College London, said the new “crime-terror nexus” was making radicalization harder to spot for European security services.

“A lot of analysts continue saying terrorists are middle or upper-class, Osama bin Laden was the son of a millionaire and the 9/11 attackers were students for instance,” he told The Independent.

“But I don’t think that doesn’t reflect the reality we have with Daesh – we need to rethink our strategy.”

Mr Neumann said many security services still expect radicalized young men to change their behavior and act “religiously”, perhaps by growing a beard or changing their clothing.

For some the pattern is still seen, but in many cases it is not, with several European fighters in the ICSR’s database continuing to smoke, drink and even take drugs up until their departure for the Daesh.

Similarly, criminality does not always stop with a commitment to terrorism. Said Kouachi may have used funds from selling counterfeit trainers to buy the weapons he and his brother used to carry out the Charlie Hebdo massacre, while the Paris and Brussels “supercell” used their connections in the criminal underworld to manufacture the fake documents that would let them evade security services.

Mr Neumann said that of the radical people examined for the study, two thirds had not just a criminal history but a violent history. In European countries where the figure is known, more than half of Daesh fighters were previously known to the police.

“It gives criminals a moral justification for doing what they have always been doing – only now they will go to heaven,” Mr. Neumann added.

Alain Grignard, a senior member of Belgium’s counter-terror agency, said Daesh can be seen as an extension of inner-city crime for many European members.

One example is Copenhagen gunman Omar el-Hussein, who killed two victims in a shooting spree after pledging allegiance to Daesh in February 2015.

He had joined a gang as a teenager and was involved in burglaries, petty crime and drugs, before being jailed for a stabbing in 2013. During his prison sentence, he started expressing a wish to fight in Syria, but three radicalization alerts to authorities went unanswered.

Upon release, el-Hussein found himself homeless and jobless, carrying out his terror attack two weeks after being freed.