Europe's
Terror Challenges: The Returnee Threat
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
October 19, 2016
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 Another week,
another barrage of headlines illustrating the depth of Europe's terror
threat. The following examples came during a 24 hour window earlier this
month: "Schiphol Airport Was Possibly A Target Of Terror Cell That
Attacked Paris;" "Police In Brussels Stabbed In Possible Terror Attack;"
and "MI5 Missed Chance To Foil Paris And Brussels Attacks."
It is news to no one that Islamic terrorism is everywhere now, and
principally in Northern and Central Europe. But the three news stories, and
the Schiphol and MI5 revelations in particular, demonstrate the enormity of
the challenges now facing European counterterrorism officials.
Intelligence and law enforcement continue to fumble in handling the
threat, often through no real fault of their own. The perpetrators are
slippery and elusive. Sometimes they travel under false names. Some slip in
as refugees, using false passports and false histories. Others are
returnees from Syria whose activities and encrypted Telegram communications
slide beneath the radar, even as they are being watched. And overtaxed law enforcement agencies have made any number
of mistakes, overlooking suspicious behavior or releasing suspects without
adequate investigation – in part a consequence of political pressures and
the fear of being accused of "Islamophobia" by
politicians and the press.
As it turned out, the suspect in the Brussels knife attack was a former
Belgian military officer already known to the police for his connections to
fighters in Syria. To date, officials have not determined whether he has
been to Syria or ISIS territory in Iraq.
But the contact with ISIS and other terror groups in the self-declared
caliphate is a common link, not only among the known perpetrators of last
November's Paris attacks and the March attacks in Brussels, but among their
alleged colleagues planning to attack Schiphol airport. Those two men,
identified as the Tunisian Sofien Ayari and Syrian-Swedish Ossama Krayem,
traveled by bus from Brussels to Amsterdam on Nov. 13, the day of the Paris
massacre. Both used false IDs. They returned, still undetected, the
following day.
Four months later, police raided a safe house used by the terror cell in
Schaarbeek, a Brussels neighborhood, and retrieved a laptop computer containing
files labeled "13 November." Included in those files were
documents referring not only to "Stade de France" and
"Bataclan" – both targets in the Paris killings – but also to a
"Schiphol group."
It is not clear why Ayari and Krayem returned to Brussels without
executing an attack on the Dutch airport, and the Dutch National
Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV) office will not
comment on the case, leaving information sketchy.
But there may be clues: Ossama Krayem was also spotted on CCTV at the Brussels Metro station that was
bombed on March 22; his lawyers maintain that he decided against detonating
his backpack. Did he panic and back out of the Schiphol attack, as well?
Following a worldwide manhunt, Belgian police arrested Salah Abdeslam, one of the few surviving
organizers of the Paris attacks, on March 18 in the Brussels district of
Molenbeek. Little notice was given at the time to the other man arrested
with him: Sofien Ayari. Three weeks later, after the March 22 attack on
Zaventem airport and Brussels' Maalbeek metro station, police also captured Mohamed Abrini, frequently referred to as
"the man in the hat" and a key player in the Zaventem bombing.
Also arrested, though also little noted at the time, was Ossama Krayem. All four remain in detention.
While it has likely been known for some time by French prosecutors, the
connection to the Schiphol airport plot was only released publicly earlier
this month.
Indeed, the latest disclosures show that the Paris-Brussels cell reached
as far as Amsterdam and the UK, as members traveled back and forth among
all four countries. No one even noticed. Worse, UK officials put a stop to an undercover investigation of a British
group with connections to Abrini months before the attacks, citing
insufficient evidence. Had that probe continued, it may have led them to Abrini – who frequently visited the British
group under orders from Syria-based leaders, experts believe.
Why would that have mattered? Because Abrini was allegedly receiving orders from Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the
mastermind of the Paris attacks and of "at least four" foiled
terror plots across the country, according to French Interior Minister
Bernard Cazeneuve. And Abaaoud, said to be one of ISIS leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi's right-hand men, was regularly going back and forth between
Syria and France. According to CNN, Abaaoud allegedly bragged in ISIS's
online magazine, Dabiq, "I was able to leave and come to Sham (Syria)
despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies. My name and
picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland,
plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became
necessary."
Experts agree that returnees like Abaaoud form the greatest terror threat
right now. It isn't simply a matter of their ability to bring the lessons
of the battlefield – bomb-building, sharp-shooting, and an emotional
resistance against killing – to Europe's villages and cities. It is their
ability to recruit new "soldiers for ISIS," some of whom will
follow the returnees back to Syria, and others who will be ordered to
remain and carry out attacks at home. And while most European countries
have severe penalties for those found guilty of aiding terrorist groups,
many returnees, like Abaaoud, simply don't get caught.
Moreover, because there is rarely hard evidence available of violence or
terrorist acts in Syria, convicting returning ISIS fighters for their
actions there is more difficult than it might seem. Smart-phone data from
some returnees, however, has occasionally offered up photographs, videos,
and other material that can be used as evidence. Consequently, their sentences can be comparatively light, less than 10
years in Germany and the UK, and usually lower for those who cooperate with
authorities.
Others may not face prison at all. A report by the Dutch intelligence service AIVD points
out that many returnees come home disappointed by the realities they
encountered. Those who were not seen as fit to fight were reduced to menial
jobs like housekeeping, and cannot be said to have engaged in terrorist
activity, and so, cannot be convicted.
At the same time, often "even those who did not fight continue to
be involved in jihadist circles" when they come home, the AIVD
reports. Others, according to a separate report published by the NCTV, join
criminal groups, possibly as a way to raise money to send back to Syria and
Iraq. And while many appear to retreat, having little social interaction,
the NCTV says, this does not mean that they have given up their jihadist
visions. Quite likely they are encouraging others through social media, in
mosques, and in small groups.
And so the cycle continues.
There is some good news. Through new initiatives, European intelligence
bureaus are sharing more information, making it less likely that
someone like Abaaoud would be able to cross borders undetected. Such alerts
would also bring attention to those returnees and other suspected jihadists
might meet with, even in a foreign country (as Abrini met with British jihadists
before the Paris strike).
More important are de-radicalization programs, which aim to change
either the behavior (known as "disengagement") or the mindsets of
jihadists, essentially challenging and discrediting their radical Islamist
ideas. How well these programs work is still uncertain, though experts
increasingly agree that altering violent behavior alone is not enough.
Because jihadists work by spreading an ideology, it is that ideology
that needs to be attacked. And because prisons are often precisely where
radical Islamic ideologies are preached and spread, counterterrorist
experts are starting to say that sending jihadists to prison is not
sufficient.
"We've seen in many other countries that when you arrest one, you
create three other extremists," German deradicalization expert David
Kohler told Frontline. "It helps to spread the idea, and
proves to the movement that they are right, that they are under
attack."
Granted, this is hardly a short-term strategy. But as the number of
people returning from Syria to the West grows, and as their reach into the
hearts and minds of Western Muslims deepens, it may be the one chance that
we have to bring the cycle of Islamist terror to an end.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands.
Related Topics: Abigail
R. Esman, European
terror threat, ISIS,
foreign
fighters, Schiphol
airport, Paris
attacks, Belgium
bombings, Abdelhamid
Abaaoud, Salah
Abdeslam, Mohamed
Abrini, Sofien
Ayari, Ossama
Krayem, AIVD,
NCTV,
David
Kohler
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