VOA常速英语:Study: Former Al-Qaida Terrorists Training Islamic State Cells in Europe(翻译)

The study looked at the al-Qaida-linked terror networks in Europe in the year early 2000s, around the time of the NATO-led invasion of Afghanistan, and the current networks linked to Islamic State that were responsible for the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels. Researchers say time and again, the same names appeared.

“The recidivism of those individuals who had originally been convicted of al-Qaida activism, almost training and grooming those individuals who would go on to be involved in the Paris and Brussels attacks.”

Those individuals included Abdelhamid Abaaoud, chief coordinator of the Paris attacks in November 2015, and Najeem Laachraoui, one of the network’s chief bomb makers, who detonated a suicide bomb at Brussels airport in March.

“They were connected to a number of individuals with previous convictions for al-Qaida related activity, and to a cleric called Khalid Zerkani, who acted almost as a father figure to a number of these individuals. ”He was actually known as ’Papa Noel’ .

Many of the elder members of former al-Qaida networks had traveled to fight in Afghanistan the previous decade, and passed on their knowledge to embryonic terror cells in Europe as the Syrian civil war became a rallying call for jihadist fighters.

“Providing them with expertise on bomb-making or network of formation, but also providing them with advice on perhaps how to travel to a conflict zone to gain training, how to gain combat experience and how to use those conflict zones as areas in which you can formulate your own ideas and formulate your own attacks.“

The report’s authors say that combat experience is key as the most serious Islamic State-linked terror plots in Europe have been planned by European citizens returning from the Syrian frontline, but the individuals are often beneath intelligence radars.

“Often these individuals perhaps haven’t come into contact with the authorities in the past.So whilst there are direct connections between the two networks, the individuals that are recruited by those veterans perhaps have only come into contact with the police through a record of petty crime.“

The report’s authors say the links show the need to improve efforts to challenge radicalization in prisons and also to develop better ways of preventing offenders from being drawn into terrorism.