NY TIMES
The identification of Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui as suicide bombers in the deadly Brussels attacks is confronting investigators and counterterrorism experts with a disturbingly recurrent question: Why do so many terrorists turn out to be brothers?
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| Salah and Ibrahim Abdeslam French Ministry of the Interior; Federal Police |
The Bakraouis join a list of brothers involved in recent terror attacks — nearly every major attack on Western soil has involved siblings, with three sets of Saudi brothers among the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Before then, the grim roster included 19th-century French anarchists, militants in Southeast Asia and the Jewish extremists who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel in 1995.
For terror groups, brothers can be ideal recruits. They radicalize each other while reinforcing a sense of purpose and ideological calling. They keep watch on each other to ensure an attack is carried out. One new study suggests that up to 30 percent of members of terrorist groups share family ties.
Siblings also present a formidable challenge for law enforcement. They often live in the same house. They can communicate easily, without using cellphones that are vulnerable to surveillance. And the glue of family can often — though not always — serve as insurance against one member of a cell betraying the mission to the authorities.
“Brothers would likely be exposed to similar radical messages, and they might well debate and brainstorm together about them,” said Audrey Kurth Cronin, an author and scholar at George Mason University. “And if you can rely on a family member in your plotting, it’s probably less likely that they’ll go to the police. It’s a question of security and trust.”
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| Said and Chérif Kouachi Judicial Police, via Getty Images |
The list goes on: in January 2015, the Kouachi brothers, Chérif and Saïd, gunned down 12 people in the Paris offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo; the Tsarnaev brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan, carried out the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon.
“Violent extremism spreads through social contact, and for most people, siblings are a big and important part of their social environment,” said J. M. Berger, a terrorism analyst and co-author of “ISIS: The State of Terror.” “You may feel you can talk to a sibling about matters you can’t discuss with others.”
The same dynamics that inform any sibling relationship are at play among brothers who radicalize, experts said. It is often the older brother who influences the younger one, though not always: At Charlie Hebdo, investigators believe, the younger brother, Chérif, was the more militant.
Mia Bloom, co-author of “All in the Family: A Primer on Terrorist Siblings,” cited scholarly research showing that as many as a third of the people terror groups send to carry out attacks came from the same family. Examples abound of jihadists marrying a sister or daughter to another jihadist family in order to build alliances.
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| Waleed and Wail al-Shehri sat side by side on American Airlines Flight 11, which struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001. Wail, the older brother, had suffered from psychological problems. The brothers are believed to have stabbed two unarmed flight attendants as the hijacking began. |
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Experts are still examining how often uninvolved family members may be aware of terrorist’ plotting. A 2014 study in The Journal of Forensic Sciences analyzed the behaviors of 119 “lone-wolf” terrorists and found that in nearly two thirds of the cases, family and friends knew the person wanted to commit an act of violence. But in some cases, relatives are strongly opposed: The American terrorist known as the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, for instance, was finally caught and convicted because his brother, David, alerted the authorities to his suspicions.
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