In May 2018, the world was shocked when entire families staged a series of suicide attacks in Surabaya, Indonesia. Children as young as nine years old were used in bombings which hit several churches and police stations. The attacks were later claimed by the self-styled Islamic State.
Entire family units, including children, carrying out jihadist terrorist attacks together was a disturbing first.[1] What isn’t new, though, is a role for families in radicalization. In fact, families can be central to the process.
See another recent case for an example. In June 2018, Safaa Boular, an 18-year-old from Vauxhall, London, was convicted for plotting a terror attack on the British Museum in London. Her sister Rizlaine had already admitted to planning a knife attack in London, while her mother pleaded guilty to assisting her.[2] Furthermore, Safaa met an Islamic State fighter named Naweed Hussain online and married him in an online marriage ceremony when she was just 16. Hussain was subsequently killed in Syria in a drone strike.
Looking into the more distant past, this trend goes all the way back to 9/11, when Saudi brothers Waleed and Wail al-Shehri and Nawaf and Salem al-Hazmi joined the hijack teams.[3]
The process of radicalization in individuals differs greatly and can be driven by multiple factors, such as a search for a sense of belonging and meaning, personal grievances, or the lasting shock after a traumatic experience. In addition, the factors can interact in complex ways.
Undoubtedly, though, the process can be supported by a social space offering strong social bonds.[4] Association between people with similar beliefs and characteristics can create a sense of collective identity and open the recruitment door, as individuals can be more susceptible to embracing extremist ideology when it is promoted by people they are close to and trust.[5]
There is a push here as well as a pull. Individuals may have personal motivations for radicalizing, but in a group these feelings may be strongly amplified, as they are transferred through preexisting bonds of trust.[6]
Dr. Mohammed M. Hafez noted this in his article in CTC Sentinel, The Ties that Bind: How Terrorists Exploit Family Bonds: “peer-to-peer radicalization suggests that the search for individual motivations may not always be helpful in explaining why persons get involved with terrorism because the motivation may not reside with the individual actors themselves, but in the small extremist milieu from which they hail.”[7]
Families are of course the most important social group for most individuals. For this reason, the household offers a perfect setting for recruitment and radicalization. Preexisting connections and trust between family members can be used to spread radical ideology and draw more members towards extremist beliefs, all in a space that is virtually uncontrollable by authorities.
Furthermore, in radicalization within a family, it is often the case that one member serves as a “figure of influence”, bringing the ideology into the home and using his or her powers of persuasion to attract the other family members.
In further examples, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the leader of the group that carried out the Paris attacks of November 2015, was able to recruit his 13-year-old brother Younes, while Ahmed Hannachi, the man who killed two women at Marseille’s Saint Charles train station, was allegedly indoctrinated and radicalized by his brother Anis. [8] [9]
Similarly, the cell that carried out the Barcelona attacks included four sets of brothers. Age and kinship appear to have played a part in how the cell was structured, with the elder brothers Younes Abouyaaqoub, Mohamed Hichamy, Driss Oukabir and probably Youssef Aalla too playing key operational roles while their younger siblings were more peripheral.[10]
Husband and wife attack duos have also been seen. A particularly notable example was the 2005 hotel bombing attacks in Amman, Jordan, when Iraqi husband and wife Ali-Hussein al-Shamari and Sajidah al-Rishawi blew themselves up inside the Radisson SAS Hotel.[11]
Radicalization among family members can be seen in foreign fighter circles as well. A 2014 report by German intelligence found that 18% of German foreign fighters had traveled to Syria with family members. Similarly, in Italy, several high profile foreign fighter cases have involved the departure of families towards the Syrian warzone.[12]
One of these is the particularly interesting case of Sayed Fayek Shebl Ahmed, a 23-year-old Egyptian national who left Como in northern Italy for Syria. Sayed was the son of a former mujahid who had fought in Bosnia in the 1990s. The father reportedly helped his son to join a militia aligned with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and repeatedly encouraged him to remain in Syria and fight. The man was later arrested for association with terrorism and his wife was deported on national security grounds.[13]
Further family stories can be found in the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) database of jihadist terrorist attacks carried out in the West from the declaration of the caliphate by the self-styled Islamic State in June 2014 up to the present. They provide an opportunity for more systematic analysis.
In the database, out of a total of 94 individuals who were physically involved in 71 attacks, at least ten of the attackers acted in collaboration with an immediate family member (brother, sister, husband, wife.[14] Eight of them were brothers while two were husband and wife:
January 2015 Charlie Hebdo Attack:
Cherif and Said Kouachi (brothers)
December 2015 San Bernardino Shooting:
Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwad Farook (husband and wife)
March 2016 Brussels Airport and Metro Bombings:
Ibrahim and Khalid Bakraoui (brothers)
August 2017 Catalonia Attacks:
Younes and Houssaine Abouyaaqoub (brothers)
Omar and Mohamed Hichamy (brothers)
The average age of the family member attackers was 26.5. The age difference between family members was between one and three years.
Half of them were legal residents while the other half were citizens of the countries in which they carried out attacks.
Brothers are the most prominent type of kin in this group. Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook are the only husband and wife in the data set.
Almost all were part of larger networks which carried out sophisticated attacks against multiple targets. Brussels bombers Ibrahim and Khalid Bakraoui were part of a network of terrorists operating between France and Belgium, while the Abouyaaqoub and Hichamy brothers were part of a large cell of around a dozen individuals responsible for the attacks in Catalonia.
Furthermore, in many cases family members did not carry out attacks but did provide assistance, as seen in the case of the Catalonia and Paris cells, or knew something about a plot or at least the radicalization of a family member.
In particular, as noted above, the Spanish cell included four sets of brothers, but some were not physically involved in the attacks and only played supporting roles. Youssef Aalla, for example, the brother of Said Aalla, killed in the attack in Cambrils, and Mohammed Aalla, the owner of the car that was used in the Cambrils attack, was killed by the explosion in the house in Alcanar where the group had been preparing explosive devices.[15]
Similarly, the Paris-Brussels network included another set of brothers, Brahim and Salah Abdeslam, but Salah had a supporting role and did not physically execute the attack.
Likewise, as reported earlier, Anis Hanachi reportedly played an important role in his brother’s radicalization, encouraging him to carry out an attack.[16]
While it is difficult to determine exactly how the radicalization processes of these individuals took place, it is evident that, having carried out attacks in larger networks, there was a social element to their radicalization. Brother attackers acted side by side with people they knew well.
The links can be long-standing. In Catalonia, the men involved in the plot all knew each other from their youth, albeit to varying degrees, as most had attended the same middle and high schools.[17]
Cherif Kouachi’s network, meanwhile, brought him in touch with Amedy Coulibaly while serving time in the Fleury-Megoris prison after he was arrested for attempting to travel to Iraq in 2005 to fight against coalition forces. Kouachi and Coulibaly then began meeting regularly with Jamal Beghal, an Algerian militant who was serving a 10-year sentence for a plot to bomb the US embassy in Paris. Beghal had been a regular at the Finsbury Park mosque in London and was considered to be one of Al Qaeda’s top recruiters in Europe by French and British intelligence.[18]
Furthermore, all the attacks in which family attackers were involved were claimed by an extremist organization. The San Bernardino, Brussels and Catalonia attacks were claimed by Islamic State while Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula took responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack.
The attacks were also particularly deadly. On average, the attacks in the ISPI database resulted in six deaths per attack. Looking at family member attacks alone, the average was 19 victims. This is due to the fact that the attacks were generally large and sophisticated plots, carried out by multiple individuals using firearms, explosives and vehicles. In sum, family attackers are fairly rare in the big picture, but they are important and notable because their plots can be highly lethal.
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References
[1] H. Beech and M. Suhartono, At the Heart of Indonesia Terror Attacks, a Well-Liked Family, The New York Times, May 18, 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/world/asia/indonesia-surabaya-terrorism-dita-oepriarto.html
[2] London teen guilty of museum terror plot, BBC News, June 4, 2018: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44359751
[3] The Outsize Role of Brothers in Terrorist Plots, The New York Times, March 23, 2016: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/23/world/brothers-terrorism.html?mcubz=0
[4] N. Hamid, What Makes a Terrorist?, The New York Review of Books, August 23, 2017: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/08/23/what-makes-a-terrorist/
[5] M. Hafez, The Ties that Bind: How Terrorists Exploit Family Bonds, CTC Sentinel, February 2016: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2016/02/CTC-SENTINEL-Vol9Iss210.pdf
[6] M. Hafez, The Ties that Bind: How Terrorists Exploit Family Bonds, CTC Sentinel, February 2016: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2016/02/CTC-SENTINEL-Vol9Iss210.pdf
[7] M. Hafez, The Ties that Bind: How Terrorists Exploit Family Bonds, CTC Sentinel, February 2016: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2016/02/CTC-SENTINEL-Vol9Iss210.pdf
[8] A. Higgins and K. de Freytas-Tamura, An ISIS Militant From Belgium Whose Own Family Wanted Him Dead, The New York Times, November 17, 2015: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/world/europe/paris-attacks-abdelhamid-abaaoud-an-isis-militant-from-belgium-whose-own-family-wanted-him-dead.html
[9] G. Baldessarro, Sara` estradato in Francia il fratello dell’attentatore di Marsiglia, La Repubblica, October 17, 2017: http://bologna.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/10/17/news/sara_estradato_in_francia_il_fratello_dell_attentatore_di_marsiglia-178523087/
[10] F. Reinares and C. Garcia-Calvo, “Spaniards, You Are Going to Suffer:” The Inside Story of the August 2017 Attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, CTC Sentinel, January 2018: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2018/01/CTC-Sentinel_Vol11Iss1-1.pdf
[11] M. Hafez, The Ties that Bind: How Terrorists Exploit Family Bonds, CTC Sentinel, February 2016: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2016/02/CTC-SENTINEL-Vol9Iss210.pdf
[12] See the cases of Alice Brignoli, Laura Passoni.
[13] Redazione online Milano, Como, terrorismo: arrestati padre e figlio egiziani. Espulsa la madre, Corriere della Sera, January 26, 2018: https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/18_gennaio_26/como-terrorismo-arrestati-padre-figlio-egiziani-d7861ca8-026e-11e8-b05c-ecfd90fad4de.shtml
[14] The study, published in June 2017 by ISPI, George Washington University’s Program on Extremism and The ICCT – The Hague, analyzes jihadist attacks in North America and Europe. The Center on Radicalization and International Terrorism at ISPI maintains an updated database on attacks, drawing from the findings of the report. L. Vidino, F. Marone, E. Entenmann, Fear Thy Neighbor. Radicalization and Jihadist Attacks in the West, ISPI, June 2017: https://www.ispionline.it/sites/default/files/pubblicazioni/radicalization_web.pdf
[15] P. Kingsely and R. Minder, Van Driver in Barcelona Attack Is Killed by Police, The New York Times, August 21, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/world/europe/spain-catalunya-barcelona-imam.html
[16] G. Baldessarro, Sara` estradato in Francia il fratello dell’attentatore di Marsiglia, La Repubblica, October 17, 2017: http://bologna.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/10/17/news/sara_estradato_in_francia_il_fratello_dell_attentatore_di_marsiglia-178523087/
[17] A. Rubin, P. Kingsley and P. Karasz, Barcelona Attack Suspects Had Ties to Imam Linked to ISIS, The New York Times, August 20, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/world/europe/spain-barcelona-attack-suspects.html
[18] A. Chrisafis, Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalized in Paris, The Guardian, January 12, 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-charlie-hebdo-attackers-kids-france-radicalised-paris
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