Rajan Basra
@rajanbasra
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Researching how terrorists think and act. @ICSR_centre Fellow / @WarStudies PhD and postdoc / Studying cycles of violence and peace with @XCEPT_Research
King's College London
Joined October 2014
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On October 30th, a man threw petrol bombs at an immigration centre in Dover, injuring two. Minutes later he killed himself.
Three days on, the attack has been largely forgotten.
But it's worth taking a closer look at what he posted online, and what it says about radicalisation:
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Today Saffiya Shaikh, a 36-year-old jihadist convert, was sentenced to life for trying to blow up St. Paul's Cathedral.
Last year I came across her YouTube profile.
So what do her browsing habits reveal about her radicalisation?
Turns out, quite a lot:
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As a thought experiment, let's imagine if the perpetrator had, say, brown skin.
That he made negative comments online about the government.
And then threw petrol bombs at an army recruitment centre, before killing himself.
Would there be a delay in classifying it as terrorism?
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So far the police haven’t decided if it meets the “threshold for terrorism”, instead saying it was “likely to be driven by some form of hate-filled grievance”.
What is that threshold? Can it be publicly stated?
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The next day the Home Secretary said: “The British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our Southern coast...”
What followed was debate over the word "invasion", but next to nothing about how this rhetoric relates to an attack like this.
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His response was, ironically, exactly what ISIS wanted: to (further) polarise European societies, provoke a backlash, and force Muslims to decide “us or them”.
ISIS wanted to destroy, in their words, "the grey zone" and reduce the world to black and white choices.
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The earliest posts online are from a 2014 twitter account, with just 4 tweets.
His first message was “I love the world”.
A day later: “It’s time to intern all radical Muslims”.
That’s quite the one-two. The remaining tweets were about jihadists and grooming gangs.
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He was following 59 accounts. 58 were mainstream; the type twitter suggests you follow when you sign up.
The remaining account he followed was the BNP.
So it seems he held far-right views since at least 2014.
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The "is this terrorism?" debate can obscure the insightful things Andy Leak's case shows us.
There's much more to say about this, but I'll stop here.
You can amplify this thread to your audience, if you've found it interesting. Thanks for reading. /END
On October 30th, a man threw petrol bombs at an immigration centre in Dover, injuring two. Minutes later he killed himself.
Three days on, the attack has been largely forgotten.
But it's worth taking a closer look at what he posted online, and what it says about radicalisation:
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We now know the
#ViennaAttack
was carried out by a convicted terrorist, released early from prison.
He tricked the authorities by falsely complying, like other attackers:
2016 Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray 🇫🇷
2016 Osny prison 🇫🇷
2019 London Bridge 🇬🇧
Some thoughts in this thread:
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All of this makes me ask:
What separates Andy Leak from everyone else that makes threats online but never acts on them?
So many others consume the same racist and xenophobic material as him - why was he the one to act on it?
He'd held these views for years - so why attack now?
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He next popped up on Twitter in November 2015.
After the ISIS attacks in Paris that month, he posted:
"We're an island and we've been attacked before. It's time to close the borders, sink all these boats, let's sort out the strong from the weak"
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Those questions are tough to answer. But when you put all of this together, we can see a complex mix of racism and xenophobia, conspiratorial thinking, and what appear to be mental health issues. I wouldn't be surprised if there was drug/alcohol misuse too.
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Exactly 30 years ago today, the leader of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) was arrested in Lima.
Called the "capture of the century", it is one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of counterterrorism.
Here's how Abimael Guzmán was taken down. THREAD/
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Then there's radio silence until he pops up on YouTube.
At first, some innocuous videos: him drinking in the street (2016), an intelligible rant (2017), and complaints about internet speed (2017).
So far, nothing wild. Videos sent into the ether, watched by virtually no-one.
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I don't have coverage of what he posted in 2020 when the pandemic hit.
But by the end of 2021 he was posting anti-vaxx content, so again we see elements of conspiratorial thinking.
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His final tweet, as reported by
@hopenothate
(who’ve done a good job highlighting the accounts he was following):
“We will obliterate them Muslim children [they] are now our target. And there [sic] disgusting women will be targeted mothers and sisters Is burn alive”
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Not all of his tweets were extremist, and on he was still following mainstream accounts (but no BNP this time).
He fired off a few tweets over 7 days, and stopped using the account.
It was “just another” Twitter user. A few red flags, but nothing immediate.
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One 2018 video suggests he was delusional:
"I will bring knife crime down by 50% in 2 years"
But it gives insight into his life:
"I'm 63 years old, I've been in prison, I know about violence ... about being disadvantaged ... and abused, and neglected. I know all that."
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Here we see signs of conspiratorial thinking.
Facebook and Instagram (and Whatsapp) were actually down on 13/03/2019, for technical reasons.
But for Andy Leak, the outage was deliberate interference into the UK by outsiders: "You will be brought to the tower my friend"
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In Andy Leak's case, it culminated this last weekend.
On Saturday he drove to a migrant centre in Dover, and was seen looking at the buildings, driving past multiple times.
This was possibly hostile reconnaissance (or was he backing out of an attack last minute?).
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Throughout this time, the grooming gangs issue was still on his mind.
He even made a Pinterest post (!) about it in 2019.
(Look at the contrast between his post and what Pinterest suggests you use the search bar for... just unreal)
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Then a step change. A 2019 video after Parliament voted to reject a no deal Brexit (on March 13)
Titled: "Treason buy Facebook zuckerman..." (his typos)
He said: "Facebook has committed treason on the British people. They have blocked Facebook and Instagram because of the vote"
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NOTE: in the replies there is a photo circulating of Nigel Farage, with claims that Andy Leak was standing next to him. That is not true.
Here's the video, from the "March to Leave" on 29/03/2019 at Parliament Square. It's not Andy Leak.
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He styled himself as a “Defender of free speech” and “Protector of women and children”.
And then there were scattered calls to action and some signalling of intent.
These tweets are hints he wanted to actually DO something about what he perceived to be an injustice. Red flag.
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He returned the next morning, driving ~110 miles from his home in Buckinghamshire.
Eyewitnesses describe him “laughing” and “shouting” as he threw a handful of improvised petrol bombs at the migrant centre.
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Five recent terrorist attacks have featured fake suicide belts:
2015 Paris police station attack 🇫🇷
2017 London Bridge vehicle ramming 🇬🇧
2017 Barcelona vehicle ramming 🇪🇸
2017 Surgut stabbings 🇷🇺
2019 London Bridge stabbings 🇬🇧
Some thoughts in this thread:
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At the same time he was posting anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and general xenophobic tweets.
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He also posted about his difficulties on Twitter.
(This account was created in May 2022, but was suspended after the attack).
Said he had stage 3 cancer, that his son Jamie had recently died of suicide, and his mother "was beaten by drunken men most of her life"
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Then there's his posts in the last few months.
In April he posted a video on Youtube titled "I am broken".
"I buried my 41 year old son yesterday, and I'm devastated"
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Less common were homophobic and anti-trans posts. As far I can see, anti-Semitic content was limited to just one retweet.
(Some of his tweets may have been deleted by Twitter after he posted, and we just don't see them in the Google cache we're looking at)
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And then after that, a truly bizarre video:
"If you want to be in on the next biggest dating site, contact me. £100 will get you a long way..."
In the context of him just saying he's buried his son, this was a real change of pace.
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Immediately after that, another YouTube video:
"I'm dying, but no-one will believe me. I've been dying for the last 2 years mate. I'm fucked. I just, I lost it 6 months ago"
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END/ I hope this thread has been useful in exploring some of the nuances about radicalisation. You can read this thread here:
COMING SOON: later this month I'll be publishing research on how prisons manage extremists, so watch this space.
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8/ Which makes you wonder: If all that all that extremist content was - and remains - so accessible on YouTube, why haven't they taken it down?
Well, much of it is presented in a careful way that doesn't explicitly incite people to carry out attacks.
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3/ She was addicted to drugs (heroin) and looking for answers, all framed through her faith.
It might seem strange that a jihadist would be taking drugs.
They're supposed to be pious, right? Not always. Jihadists taking drugs is more common than you may think.
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4/ She also appears naive, gullible, and lacking in critical thinking skills.
One playlist was called 'Magic', with videos saying you can change the colour of your eyes by listening to certain sound frequencies.
You can't do this, but she seems to have tried.
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A list of recent terrorism cases involving 3D printed guns. THREAD/
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12/ Safiyya Shaikh's case is, genuinely, a fascinating one.
You can read more about it, from
@BBCDomC
, here:
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2/ She made playlists, and lots of them: 89 over the course of 12 months. That's almost one every four days.
So she spent a lot of time consuming this - mostly extremist - material.
But it also shows us what was happening in her life.
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10/ One question sticks out:
Why did she move from being a supporter of jihadism, watching videos online, to actually wanting to *act*?
That's a question that terrorism researchers like myself have difficulty answering.
Was she tired of watching from the sidelines?
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There's a lot of attention on the
#Buffalo
terrorist's manifesto.
But there's another, more revealing document: his online diary.
After a first read, a few things stand out. THREAD/
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6/ Put all of these things together - her drug use, social isolation, and naivety - and you have someone who could be "vulnerable" to extremist messaging.
So she watched videos.
Abdallah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, and more
Basically a jihadist "who's who"
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7/ But a lot of that "old school" material is pretty dull. It's in Arabic, old, and doesn't cater to a "Western" audience.
So who did watch more than anything?
Videos from the "new school" of radicalisers. They live in the West, speak English, and pump out *a lot* of content.
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5/ Shaikh was also isolated from her family. Converts often find their new lives to be difficult.
Her relationship with the father of her child also didn't work out well.
She created a FB page and met other convert 'sisters', but was soon ostracised for her extremist views.
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For researchers/students looking for data, here's a list of 30 terrorism databases:
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9/ There was nothing on her YouTube from Anwar al-Awlaki, a notorious radicaliser.
In 2017, YouTube banned *all* content from him, regardless of message (his most popular videos were not actually extremist).
Maybe they'll do that with other extremists too?
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Photos of the 2017 Barcelona cell preparing for their attacks: making kilos of TATP, hording dozens of gas canisters, and trying on suicide belts. Fortunately, the house they were using for this blew up...
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11/ It was not inevitable she would carry out an attack, even with her "vulnerabilities".
Maybe "prevention" programs could've worked a few years ago, earlier in her radicalisation.
But as soon as she wanted to kill others? You have to lock dangerous people like that up.
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A year in the making: we sifted through 38,000 sources and looked all over Europe to find the overlaps between drugs and terrorism.
And we found everything from jihadis using heroin to paramilitaries attacking drug dealers
I'm excited to show you some of the findings (THREAD):
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The
#Halle
attacker uploaded more than a manifesto.
We can build a general timeline of his attack preparation by looking at the content and "date modified" of those files.
How long do you think it took to plan/prepare this attack? (THREAD)
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3/ Adel Kermiche, for example, told the judge:
"I am a Muslim who believes in mercy, in doing good, I’m not an extremist… I want to get back my life, see my friends, get married"
The judge released him in 2016, and 4 months later he killed a priest in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray.
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Some absurdities from terrorism cases in Europe. A short THREAD/
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Thrilled to say I passed my PhD viva today with no corrections!!
Thank you to my supervisor
@PeterRNeumann
, examiners
@TimWilsonCSTPV
and Jonathan Ilan, and the entire ICSR team
Worth saying, three years ago I failed my upgrade. So to everyone in difficulty now - never give up!
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2/ In all these cases, the authorities believed the jihadists were model inmates, who were going to leave terrorism behind.
They had been through the deradicalisation schemes, and had openly said (and shown) they were changing their ways.
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"What at first sight appears as an isolated attack in an obscure German city is just the latest in a series of connected far-right terrorist attacks that have taken place across the world"
New
@TIME
piece on
#Halle
by myself
@FlorenceKeen
@CrawfordBlyth
:
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END/ Countries across Europe are facing similar issues, and it really makes sense to learn from the success (and failures) of other countries.
With that said, me and
@PeterRNeumann
published an
@ICSR_Centre
report on this issue. You can read it here:
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4/ The idea of hiding their true intentions is to be expected.
It's not unique to jihadists, of course (all types of criminals do it), and it would be a mistake to say Muslim prisoners are exceptional in this regard because of "taqiyya" (a mostly Shia concept of dissimulation).
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6/ What is instead needed is close monitoring, in a safe prison that is properly funded, with well-trained staff who are able to build rapport and actual relationships with inmates.
It may seem obvious, but many prison services in developed countries don't have these conditions.
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2/ All of these attacks involved unsophisticated methods: vehicle rammings and/or knife stabbings.
So why the fake vests? They not only spread further terror, but are also a near guarantee that the police will shoot them dead. For the attacker this is their death wish fulfilled.
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END/ So fake suicide belts represent an innovation amongst jihadists, but it's not one driven by propaganda.
Instead, it's a bottom-up innovation, with attackers almost certainly "learning" from and copying each other's methods.
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5/ Seeing it as "taqiyya" obviously creates a dangerous conundrum, which can only satisfy your worst expectations:
Either you see signs of their radicalisation, confirming your suspicions, or you *don't* see signs of radicalisation, *also* confirming your suspicions
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Here's the first thorough study of Italy's 125 foreign fighters, using Interior Ministry data, by
@ispionline
.
We're looking at the underclass: manual labour jobs (45%), unemployed (34%), 1st-gen immigrants (66%), low education (88%), criminality (44%).
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A year of white nationalist terrorism
Oct 2018: Pittsburgh synagogue 🇺🇸
Mar 2019: Christchurch mosques 🇳🇿
Apr 2019: Poway synagogue 🇺🇸
Aug 2019: El Paso 🇺🇸
Aug 2019: Bærum mosque 🇳🇴
85 dead. Each attack connected by the idea of an "invasion"/"great replacement"/"white genocide"
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9/ It's worth noting that in 2013, Austria had zero terrorist inmates in its prison service.
In March 2019 (when the Vienna attacker was convicted), it had 39 (2 women, 11 “young adults”) and 20 on pre-trial detention.
It has had to develop processes, and expertise, quickly.
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This is the (now deleted) profile of Redouane Lakdim, who carried out the attack in France today. A few things to note:
- No statement/video was posted in advance of his attack
- "Firdaws", listed after his name, means the highest level of heaven
- He had a fascination with guns
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We know much of jihadists who blow themselves up. But what about those that sit on the margins of the movement?
1/ Let's look at Nourdeen Abdullah: an unreported story about prison, £2,000 of crack cocaine, Islamic state propaganda, and contact with a foreign fighter in Syria.
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Jawad Bendaoud, the drug dealer who harboured two jihadists after the 2015 Bataclan attacks has amazingly, once again, become a meme:
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Even ISIS supporters should be offended at this terrible design
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Here's one YouTube account from a famous British jihadist radicaliser.
- His videos don't appear in search results
- Neither does his channel
- No comments
- No suggested videos on the side
And the result?
Only 12 views for his new video.
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UPDATE: Counter Terrorism Policing have today said the attack "meets the threshold for a terrorist incident".
While "mental health was likely a factor", the attacker had an "extreme right wing motivation", a statement says.
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To end on a positive note, two undercover officers pretended to be a couple for surveillance. They actually fell in love and later married.
There's more to say about Sendero Luminoso, but that's all for now. Hope you've found this thread interesting.
Exactly 30 years ago today, the leader of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) was arrested in Lima.
Called the "capture of the century", it is one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of counterterrorism.
Here's how Abimael Guzmán was taken down. THREAD/
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Islamic State is promoting crime as jihad. Me and
@PeterRNeumann
analyse this in new
@CTCWP
Sentinel. Click here:
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8/ There are always going to be disciplined terrorists who could maintain the façade for months and years.
But cases like those are rare and exceptional (such as Usman Khan and the 2019 London Bridge attack), because it is difficult to trick people for so long.
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7/ In those conditions, where there are regular assessments, made by multiple, experienced staff, with a comprehensive flow of intelligence, most cases of false compliance will be spotted.
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How does criminality affect terrorism? Me and
@PeterRNeumann
explore the central dynamics in new
@Perspectives_T
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@WendyLlewellyn5
This isn't true. The photo is from the "March to Leave" on 29/03/2019 at Parliament Square. Here's the video; it's not Andy Leak. You should retract your tweet to avoid spreading misinformation.
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3/ Presumably, the attackers would've looked up how to create an actual bomb, and decided against it (for lack of expertise/time/materials/something else).
This is despite ISIS putting out detailed instructions (including a step-by-step video) on how to make explosives.
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What can we learn from this episode?
Well, sometimes you just need old-fashioned detective work to catch a terrorist, even if it's tedious. Figure out who's who, look at the small details, and learn how to get people to talk.
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Another example of a terrorist group transforming into a criminal gang.
This time its the Ulster Volunteer Force dealing cocaine in Belfast:
"These gangs aren't there to help the area they're in; they're there to exploit and make money off the community"
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The terrorist prison population in Great Britain, by ideology
- Near record numbers overall
- Jihadists make up largest category (70%), but down from 2017 peak
- Far-right seeing year on year rise (now 22%)
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They searched one of those safehouses in January 1991, and made perhaps the most surreal discovery in the history of terrorism.
They found a home video of Guzmán with the central committee of Sendero Luminoso...
dancing to music...
...from the 1964 film Zorba the Greek
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4/ And neither has ISIS or its fanboys really encouraged the use of fake suicide belts. There has only been one known instance: a French-language An Nur Media post in August 2016 (h/t
@raffpantucci
).
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Abdelkader
#Merah
claims he listened to AQ tapes to improve his Arabic. The lawyer's response: "You don't read Mein Kampf to learn German!"
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@Judeet88
@mirabarhillel
This isn't true. The photo is from the "March to Leave" on 29/03/2019 at Parliament Square. Here's the video; it's not Andy Leak. You should retract your tweet to avoid spreading misinformation.
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JUST PUBLISHED: so proud to share this
@ICSR_Centre
report with you
It looks at how terrorist prisoners are managed in 10 European countries
This side of counterterrorism will only become more important in the coming years. Here's the big picture:
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In 2014 jihadists overran the Lebanese town of Arsal, and took over 30 Lebanese soldiers and police officers as hostages.
There are many parallels to what's going on in Israel and Gaza now.
Here's what happened then, and what it shows about terrorist kidnappings:
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Thrilled that my article with
@PeterRNeumann
on the crime-terror nexus will be the October
@CTCWP
Sentinel cover story - coming tomorrow!
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I really expected ISIS to have employed more cooks 👀
Here we can see, from the perspective of the group’s payroll, who was assigned to what role. We can see the emphasis the group placed on law and order, as well as the fact that the group valued education.
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Feeling really proud today after guest lecturing on the King's
@warstudies
terrorism master's, especially after being a student on it myself two years ago!
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19/ The
#Buffalo
attack shows it's not "either/or". Nuance is needed.
His diary demonstrates a volatile dynamic between mental health issues and white nationalist ideology, racism, and "white genocide" thinking.
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9/ So here we had someone inspired by white nationalist terrorism, considering an attack of his own, and (whether intentionally or not) indicating their plans/ideas to a third-party.
In terrorism studies this is known as "leakage" and it can be a key point of prevention.
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1/ Let's have a look at how Belgium handles its terrorist inmates.
This thread is based on an interview the
@CrimeTerror
team conducted with members of CelEx (the "Extremism Cell"), a unit created in 2015 tasked with monitoring prison radicalisation in Belgium.
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