Crime and terror of social exclusion: The case of 13 imams in Bulgaria

Introduction

The article’s outline comprises four key components to analyse and clarify the link between organized crime and radicalization in Bulgaria. ¹ First, this Introduction provides a detailed description of the religious context in Bulgaria and of the country’s ethnic minorities. The focus is placed on the Bulgarian experience related to a precedent of radicalization in the country’s territory dating back to 2014, illustrating the dangers posed by radical Islam and the establishment of the so-called terrorist ‘melting pots’ in their various natures – from illegal mosques to places for accommodation of foreign fighters, because Bulgaria was subject to both. Second, I analyse factors that could potentially lead to acts of jihadi terrorism in the Republic of Bulgaria. Third, a case study of the criminal case of the 13 imams from Pazardzhik is offered as an example of an organized crime network that aims to support its modus operandi by employing radicalization. Finally, the Conclusion offers my perspective on how the above-mentioned case study could enrich the theoretical framework in the field of organized crime studies with the help of the contextual environment in Bulgaria. This particular criminal case is a useful example, providing us with a viewpoint of the connection between organized crime and terrorist activities on Bulgarian territory, because the country also serves as an external border of the European Union (EU).

The lack of sound and coherent integration of certain communities into Bulgarian society brings about the risk of potential radicalization among the Roma and Muslim Bulgarians and of causing sudden changes in their habits, behaviour and lifestyle because ‘the identity crisis among them is deepening and they are vulnerable to such dangerous ideas’ (see Papakochev, 2016). These communities are attracting the interest of foreign organizations currently operating in the territory of Bulgaria and claiming the right to care about and support their religious needs. This article addresses why a radicalization attempt in Pazardzhik’s Roma community failed despite all of the favourable conditions that were present. On the one hand, the criminal case of the 13 imams and their criminal activities on Bulgarian territory serves as a case-study example of a failed attempt at radicalization, concealing new threats to the country’s national security related to affiliation with organized crime in Bulgaria. On the other hand, the main targets were teenage Roma, who are uneducated, unemployed, without income or without a future. The circumstances of these targets make them a potential target for organizations that select such young people to be used as cannon fodder for the purposes of Islamic terrorism (see also Emerson and Hartman, 2006; Gunning and Jackson, 2011; Juergensmeyer, 2001; Pech and Slade, 2006; White, 2012).

The debates over the crime–terror nexus began in 1999, in the context of a controversial and intense discussion over the appearance of new phenomena and over parallel changes occurring in conflicts, insurgency and security in general (Cilluffo, 2000). Over the years, empirical analyses have proved problematic owing to the sensitive nature of the topic and the difficulty in identifying reliable data. Thus, the link between organized crime and terrorism proved a durable one. The concept of the crime–terror nexus is habitually used to refer to the connection between two different actors, provided with distinct identities, aims and methods but willing to go beyond the latter to reach practical goals (Cornell, 2005).

Bulgaria is one of Europe’s leading states in terms of the total number of mosques on its territory – 1500 in total (1300 of which are accessible to visitors, although not operational; only 850 of them serve for prayer) (Emin, 2017). The figure is impressive compared with Bulgaria’s neighbours: there are fewer than 400 mosques in Greece (Allievi, 2014) and approximately 80 in Romania (Grigore, 1999). State funding for the Muslim denomination in Bulgaria has been gradually increasing over the past few years (U.S. Department of State, 2014), although statistical data from the National Statistical Institute of the Republic of Bulgaria (NSI) show that the total number of Muslims and Roma residing in Bulgaria in the period 1992–2012 (NSI, 2012: 132) was decreasing. According to Hackett (2016), in the same period, Bulgaria achieved the most substantial native Muslim population in the European Union (EU) in terms of share of total population – approximately 13 percent. However, the state is nonetheless not allocating sufficient funds in terms of financial support for that religious group, providing space to international Islamist organizations to fill that vacuum. In a study by Ivanov (2012: 1–2), the rediscovery of Islam and processes of Islamization in Bulgaria can be found primarily in two Muslim communities – the Roma Muslims and the so-called Pomaks. ² According to the 2011 Census performed by NSI (2011: 3), Muslims of Turkish ethnicity are the most numerous in Bulgaria, followed by Muslims of Roma ethnicity, who represent an ethnic group that has been the quickest to embrace Islam in the years after 2000 and to change its religious habits, lifestyle and way of life (Alpha Research, 2017). Conversely, since 2000, there are fewer Muslims of Bulgarian ethnicity, among whom we can also see a change in lifestyle (see also Maeva, 2006), a change of habits and a growing interest on the part of young people to study Islam in foreign countries in which the Islam preached differs radically from that characteristic of Bulgaria. A typical trait of all these groups is the confession of so-called ‘traditional’ Islam, which coexists seamlessly with the other religions in Bulgaria. Alpha Research (2017) ascertained that the level of religiosity is highest among those who face deep poverty – the Muslims in the ghettos (namely of Roma ethnicity), 99 percent of whom say that religion is important in their lives. Roma constitute 5 percent of Bulgaria’s population; however, this figure is an underestimate, because many distrust officials and refuse to register or misstate their ethnicity because prejudice equates it with backwardness and petty crime (NSI, 2011). The integration of the Roma population is not a problem of a single ethnos; it is a problem concerning the whole society and could be successfully accomplished only in conditions of understanding and commitment on the part of both the Roma ethnic population and a majority of the country’s population (The Economist, 2015).

A glance at changes in the Muslim communities in Bulgaria since the 1990s reveals the religious awakening of some of them – mostly young Roma individuals and Pomaks who are part of this global process of converting to the various non-traditional forms of Islam (Stoilova, 2016), thus attracting the interest of different organizations, for example Al Waqf Al Islami, Taiba and Nedduva, which are funded by the Middle East and Turkey (Abuassi, 2016). At the same time, these young people are acquainted with the doctrines of Salafism or Wahhabism, ³ which is preached with the use of arguments found in Islamic theology that are rather unusual for Bulgaria (Zhelyazkova, 2014: 591). A large number of Bulgarian Muslims voluntarily send their children to study in spiritual schools in the territory of their country, but others refuse to do so because the Turkish ethnic element is predominant in most such schools. In other words, the parents wish to avoid the influence imposed by the Turkish ethnic group and distance themselves from the latter. Thus, those who do not wish to obtain religious knowledge in Bulgaria are left with the possibility of receiving it in the countries of the Middle East (Ghodsee, 2009: 134–9). However, young people who acquire their education in such countries are trained in a completely different religious direction from the one to which they are accustomed. They also become acquainted with the local Muslim culture, which is radically different from that in Bulgaria. Returning after their training, they bring with them the lessons learned there, new traditions, how to dress and a new understanding of religion (Ilchevski, 2007).

Thus, the process of Islamization abroad provides an opportunity for a change in the mindset of Muslims in Bulgaria and their beliefs with the help of radicalization, ⁴ largely through the infiltration of various unorthodox currents of Islam such as Wahhabism and Salafism, imported from abroad and promoting a radical understanding of the texts of the Qu’ran and the messages it conveys. According to Wagemakers (2016), three branches of Salafis can roughly be distinguished: quietist Salafis, political Salafis and Jihadi-Salafis. We focus particularly on the third branch because Jihadi-Salafi ideas animated many people and, indeed, thousands of Muslim men and women flocked to Syria and Iraq – for different reasons – to support Daesh. Thus, a yearly report on the challenges to Bulgarian national security and threats imposed by foreign fighters published by the (State Intelligence Agency of the Republic of Bulgaria SIA, 2016a: 3) shows that the two most frequently targeted vulnerable groups by organizations from either of the two above-mentioned radical currents of Islam are the Bulgarian Muslims (8.8 percent of the total population) and the Roma (4.9 percent of the total population) because of their tough social and economic inequality and lack of proper integration into society. According to Velkov (2005: 195), organizations that represent branches of larger organizations from the Middle East or Turkey such as Al Waqf Al Islami, Diyanet Vakfi and Hakikat Vakfi (Islamist organizations from Saudi Arabia and Turkey) openly promote the specific interests of these two countries and the spread of Wahhabism and Salafism, explaining the process of rebirth of religion as harmless and free of threats to national security.

A recent example of this phenomenon is the new ‘growth’ in the arena of international terrorism – Daesh. Although a young organization, it has already managed to recruit sympathisers in Bulgaria. Criminal and terrorist groups appear to be learning from one another and adapting based on their successes and failures. Thus, it is necessary to acknowledge and to understand the crime–terror nexus continuum to formulate effective state responses to these evolving and periodically converging threats (Makarenko, 2004).

With money from world and regional Islamist organizations, mosque building is funded, various courses and summer camps are organized, and literature is being imported to Bulgaria, which in most cases comes from the Middle East (Stoilova, 2017). Thus, with systematic work on the mindset of adolescents, shaping their religious views and perceptions about the world and raising their standard of living in exchange for an overt promotion and manifestation of violence through jihad, terrorist groups cultivate them as associates for future terrorist acts because local recruits can provide safe houses and accommodation for foreign fighters, acquire weapons on the black market, arrange fake identification documents as needed, and identify the specific objects of aggression as stated in the SIA’s Annual Report for 2016 (2016b: 2).

Prerequisites for the development of jihadist terrorism in Bulgaria

Is there really radical Islam in Bulgaria? According to Mancheva and Dzhekova (2017: 15–16), the main factors contributing to the emergence of closed communities where melting pots (that is, places where crime and jihadist networks come together) can flourish and radical ideas are spread are centred around: labour migration across Western Europe and ties with other Muslims who preach non-traditional ideas of Islam; the emergence of a powerful leader who enjoys strong support from the closed community; the opportunity to lead a religious life in their own mosque; trying to outgrow the stigma that they are Roma; and seeking affiliation with the Muslim community. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) (FRA, 2014) compared the level of education in Roma communities in 11 EU member states, including Bulgaria. The FRA reported that, in general, Roma communities in Bulgaria have lower educational status in comparison with the country’s Bulgarian ethnic group. The inability to properly include Roma representatives in the Bulgarian ethnic community leads to a widening of the gap of mistrust between the two ethnic groups and even to marginalization of the former due to unequal social status, incompatible cultural and educational backgrounds (as highlighted by Zahariev, Yordanov and Decheva, 2013), and lack of active participation in society. These factors thus escalate the process of creating closed communities without any view of integration or better life conditions and accelerate the levels of outward migration towards other EU member states in the search for either employment or involvement in criminal activities as a source of income.

According to Simeonova, Korudzhieva and Petrova (2007: 15–18), desperation and the social exclusion of Roma individuals facilitate the work of illegal religious organizations internationally and the recruitment of members of vulnerable groups not only in Bulgaria but also in other EU member states by transforming such individuals into messengers of radical ideology to their homeland, either through the emergence of a strong community leader or simply by establishing illegal mosques in an attempt to outgrow the stigma of being Roma. The lack of finances, however, heightens the risk of radical ideology and acts of criminality connecting in areas inhabited by such ethnic minority groups, thus facilitating the creation of melting pots or of offender convergence settings in which the stage for criminal activity is set and accomplices can be easily found (Felson, 2006: 98). Clarke and Eck (2005: 66) described ‘crime facilitators’ as situational characteristics that ‘help offenders commit crimes or acts of disorder’. Such facilitators could include different factors, such as physical (tools or aspects of the physical environment that enhance an offender’s capabilities or serve to overcome prevention measures), social (facilitators increasing the rewards from crime or that provide encouragement and legitimization), or even chemical (which increase the ability of offenders to ignore risks and/or moral constraints). According to Wortley (2008), there are also ‘social precipitators’, including ‘prompts’ that trigger criminal behaviour by bringing to the surface criminally motivating thoughts, feelings and desires. The setting of the case study presented in this article falls under the above-mentioned ‘social and physical facilitators’ and under Wortley’s ‘social precipitators’ because the Roma minority group is marginalized and lacks no other opportunity except to seek survival through involvement in criminal activities of various types – one of them exploiting the weaknesses and financial inequality of other minority group members to create an organized crime network and economic dependency of that specific group on a strong community leader.

Another threat to Bulgaria’s national security is the passage of terrorists through its territory after the outbreak of the war in Syria. The country’s geographical proximity to countries exporting radical Islam makes it a zone of interest to radical Islamist organizations because Bulgaria can be used by transiting foreign fighters taking advantage of related logistical infrastructures. A potential reason that extremist organizations might target Bulgaria is its participation in numerous multinational campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). ⁵ On Bulgarian territory, terrorists engage with local Islamist organizations and mafia structures with the aim of using corruption in the institutions to obtain passports, giving them EU entry. Recently, the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD), a Bulgarian thinkthank, published an analysis of the modus operandi of people-smuggling networks in Bulgaria and of their affiliation with organized crime networks in Central and Western Europe (CSD, 2017). Bulgaria is perceived as a safe house for foreign fighters who are seeking temporary accommodation when travelling to their desired destination of conflict. Therefore, the interaction between members of the people-smuggling groups in the country and radical elements seeking violent manifestation of their ideology is explained with the help of the collaboration and exchange of services – the former need cash, and the latter need safe houses and local support to reach their destination. Usually, foreign fighters do not spend much time in Bulgaria; however, during their stay, they might get in direct contact with local supporters of their ideology or simply seek assistance in cases of need or hardship. Klaus von Lampe (2015) states: ‘Not all convergence settings for organized criminals are permanent in nature and attached to one specific location.’ As Felson (2003: 158) further argues, offender convergence settings offer ‘structure and continuity in the face of individual, group, or network instabilities’.

According to US intelligence data shown in the Country Report on Terrorism 2015 (U.S. Department of State, 2016), members of al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, Daesh and Hezbollah have crossed Bulgaria’s borders on their way to other EU member states. These terrorist organizations have recruited Muslim Bulgarians, primarily Pomaks because they appear European rather than Arabian. Ragaru (2001) notes that, since 1989, there has been increased activity in Islamist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Bulgaria, which are financed from abroad and do not have a clear record of their activities because most of them operate clandestinely, thus alerting the Bulgarian security services because the lack of transparency in their operations is an issue (CSD, 2015a). The study by CSD (2015a: 48–53) led to the conclusion that the main target groups of such NGOs that are involved in religious activities are precisely the Pomaks and the Roma, who are vulnerable owing to social marginalization and poverty. To the Turkish minority, things appear different because of their relatively higher social status. It is difficult for them to fall into the trap of extremist ideology because they adhere to their ancient traditions of Islam. Some of the organizations operating in Bulgaria are legally registered, but the majority are not. The most serious activity of an unregistered organization is performed by Igassa, a subdivision of the International Islamic Relief Organization established in Saudi Arabia, which maintains contact with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The Igassa leader is Mohammed Feliyat. According to a study of the officially registered organizations by Boyadzhiev (2005: 109), the following three undertake more serious activities: Al Waqf Al Islami, Taiba and Nedduva.

In recent years, Al Waqf Al Islami has been under the careful scrutiny of Bulgaria’s security services. The organization was famous because some of its members were defendants in the imam case in Pazardzhik. The organization was banned in Bulgaria in 1994. In 2002, it was authorized to re-register because the Law on Religions in Bulgaria had been amended. In Bulgaria, its leader is Sarnitza’s hodjah Saiid Mutlu. The organization receives monetary support from a Dutch organization bearing the same name that is associated with the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’; the banned organization Irshad (which managed to send 74 Bulgarian children to Saudi Arabia, who are currently Islamic teachers in the Rhodopes); and the non-registered NGO Al Manar. Several years ago, it transpired that six of the terrorists who participated in the terrorist act of 11 September 2001 in the USA had attended Islamist seminars organized and funded specifically by Al Waqf Al Islami in the Netherlands, as reported by Bulgarian media outlet Novinite.com (2010).

During the criminal trial of the 13 imams, it was reported in the Pazardzhik Prosecutor’s Office, as announced by the Standard Daily (2012), that financial transfers to Al Waqf Al Islami had been made from Saudi Arabia through Turkey. The branch of this organization in Bulgaria was founded in a four-star hotel in Istanbul, and its purpose was the Islamization of Bulgaria. The organization also had a network of ‘lecturers’ in Sofia, Plovdiv and Blagoevgrad. The ‘lecturers’ in question were on a salary of €600 per month, and the women received €400 for wearing the burka (Georgieva and Ivanova, 2014). Angarev (2012) notes that the Bulgarian authorities denied registration of the Islamist organization in 1994. However, Al Waqf Al Islami managed to bypass state laws and organize its operation on Bulgarian territory from Turkey.

In 1995, Taiba was established in Bulgaria and remains functional today. Its main activity is the construction of new mosques, religious schools and camps where young Muslims of Bulgarian origin can learn different forms of Islam. Taiba’s Jordanian leader Abdurahman Takan was expelled from Bulgaria in 1997 for illegal preaching against the state. According to Nikolov (2001), Taiba sends young Bulgarians to study in Middle Eastern countries, having been offered the opportunity to take a religious oath for jihad. The best cadres of the popular religious school in Ustina village have been sent to study in countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The main directions of Islam taught in the village of Ustina are Salafism and Wahhabism.

Nedduva (Neua, Nedubba, Nedla) is supported by donations primarily from Saudi Arabia and was registered in Bulgaria in 1994 by Syaif Muafak Ahmed al-Assad. Nedduva provides money to those willing to go to worship in Mecca. The organization is closely linked to the illegal religious school in Sarnitza, which is operating without the permission of the Bulgarian authorities and is managed by Saiid Mutlu, a local imam who is also suspected of preaching radical Islam in the criminal case against the 13 imams from Pazardzhik. Of course, the activity of Islamist NGOs is not accidental. A study by the Open Society Institute (2008: 12) revealed that the main goal of the above-mentioned NGOs is to recruit Bulgarian Muslims, resulting in an increase in the number of Roma neighbourhoods in Bulgaria that are newly converted to Salafism . As far as the Roma population is concerned, up to the 1990s it was typical for them not to be devoted to Salafism. Using Pazardzhik as an example, the Roma neighbourhood there currently resembles an Arab neighbourhood from the Middle East, in which men have beards and women wear burkas. Another trend among the Roma is that they tend to define themselves as Turks (Open Society Institute, 2008). Kolev (2005: 175) notes that this is due to the effect of external factors on the individual, both in the family environment and in the separate neighbourhoods, emphasizing a high standard of living rather than focusing on religious consciousness. Thus, Bulgaria’s lack of interest in the Roma ethnic group and the Pomaks, together with the insufficient funding provided to the Grand Mufti’s Office in Bulgaria, led to the financial dependency of these two minority groups and served as a firm ground for the spread of organized crime activities targeting socially excluded minority groups.

According to Boyadzhiev (2005: 107), the constant passage of illegal migrants through Bulgaria could turn the country into a centre for organizing and coordinating terrorist activities, because organized crime in Bulgaria can find a lucrative opportunity in the funds provided by terrorist organizations to facilitate the safe passage of foreign fighters through the country and provide the latter with illegal arms and fake passports. However, such processes did not become sustainable because the Bulgarian authorities strengthened border control; now, it is more difficult for people smugglers to operate as easily as they did in 2013–14, thus making Bulgaria a transit zone or a potential logistical base to facilitate the passage of foreign fighters rather than anything else. Krastev (2015) indicates that such scenarios have already been hinted at by foreign security services.

Thus far, this article has pinpointed the most important aspects of the ethnic, religious and organized crime environment in Bulgaria and factors that could only contribute to the spread of radical Islam, such as Salafism and Wahhabism. To provide an in-depth view of the country’s approach to addressing organized crime and radicalization, I chose to use the case of the 13 imams from Pazardzhik as a case study to demonstrate how these two are interconnected, because the criminal trial represents an interesting overlap of exploitation of vulnerable persons motivated to make a living by adopting radical views and participating in organized crime activities.

The case of the 13 imams in Bulgaria

The year 2014 marked the beginning of a long criminal trial that remains ongoing and is also known in Bulgaria as ‘The Case against the 13 Imams from Pazardzhik’, a town some 110 km (68 miles) east of Sofia. The number of associated arrests diminished shortly after the criminal case began because mass public disapproval of such acts followed, and people became even more suspicious of ethnic minorities. The small town near Plovdiv was quickly dubbed the ‘melting pot’ of radical Islam in Bulgaria (where organized crime and jihadism merged) by right-wing nationalist movements and political parties because materials and evidence showing affiliation with the ideology of Daesh and revealing radical ideas were found in an illegal mosque in the Roma ghetto in Pazardzhik’s Iztok neighbourhood. Therefore, in November 2014, a joint action of the Prosecutor’s Office, the State Agency for National Security (SANS) and the Ministry of Interior (MoI) occurred in the towns of Pazardzhik, Plovdiv, Smolyan and Haskovo as part of pre-trial proceedings on charges of the glorification of terrorism and antidemocratic ideology ⁶ and incitement to violence. More than 40 addresses were searched and much material evidence was seized. The operation concluded after the arrest of the spiritual leader of the Muslims in Pazardzhik’s Abu Bekir mosque – the imam Ahmed Moussa Ahmed – along with other supporters and suspects. The evidence gathered included USB flash drives, books, promotional materials, photos and flags, all relating to radical Islam and the ideology of Daesh. A press statement by the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Bulgaria (2014), released shortly after the operation occurred, reported that 26 people were initially arrested.

Some of the addresses searched coincided with the centres of dissemination of radical fundamentalist messages that were used by the 13 imams who were among those arrested. The Abu Bekir mosque is the only one in Pazardzhik and is not one of the official Muslim religious places in Bulgaria. (For this reason, the Grand Mufti’s Office has distanced itself from these events, as quoted by Banker Daily, 2014.) SANS representatives noted that the crimes were being investigated under Article 108 of the Penal Code, related to the propagation of antidemocratic ideology through glorification of terrorism, ⁷ and Article. 407 of the Penal Code, related to incitement of violence by making propaganda for war. ⁸

Six men and one woman (all of Roma origin) have been charged, first of all, with preaching the antidemocratic ideology of Daesh, as stated by the Deputy Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov. They operated as a highly secretive organized criminal group led by Ahmed Moussa and were also charged with incitement to violence. Investigators claim that the criminal activity of the defendants aimed to disseminate antidemocratic ideology by glorifying terrorism and to spread the ideas of Daesh. Funding of their activities remains unclear because the investigation remains ongoing; however, criminalists noted that a foreign branch of Al Waqf Al Islami is involved, as is money obtained through organized crime activities on Bulgarian territory to support the group’s operations. According to the second charge, the imams were engaged simultaneously in terrorism propaganda, including online activity, meaning they published photos, videos and collages with the logo of Daesh. Sourkouva (2014) emphasizes that among them was a world map with the logo of Daesh and a caption saying, ‘Bulgaria will be the first Balkan country to fly the great black flag.’ Ahmed Moussa also gave his sermons on the Internet, using the flag of Daesh as a background in the recording. Moussa used the Internet to preach radical Islam online and even recruited supporters in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK (Beslin and Ignjatijevic, 2017: 3). The radical preacher aimed at recruiting Bulgarians from socially excluded minority groups (largely Roma) to join the army of Daesh in Iraq and Syria to fight against the infidels and to strengthen the position of the terrorist organization on a global scale. The investigation found that the detainees had provided accommodation to jihadis transiting Bulgaria en route between Syria and Western Europe.

The detainees had been under SANS surveillance, and the Agency decided to act when they noticed moves aiming to recruit Daesh fighters and calls for jihad, as former SANS Chairperson Pisanchev commented in an interview (Interview of ex-SANS Chairperson Vladimir Pisanchev, 2014). Such operations are not uncommon in Europe and have been undertaken in Austria, France, Germany and the UK. These countries have special legislation criminalizing fighting on the side of terrorist groups and the recruitment of volunteers. Angarev (2014) claims that the investigators did indeed find that the criminal group received financial support from Daesh. The money went to Ahmed Moussa, but how he used it remains to be established. Bulgarian Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov said the operation had been planned for December 2014 but was undertaken early because of an information leak in which a search warrant was made public (Interview of the Bulgarian Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov, 2014).

The 37-year-old Ahmed Moussa has a very rich criminal past, involving participation in varied criminal activities. ⁹ After graduating from the illegal school for imams in Sarnitsa, the imam, who is being charged with preaching radical Islam, participation in an organized crime group and incitement to violence based on religious grounds, says he started feeling reborn, claiming Allah cured him (24 Chasa, 2014). The independent newspaper report on Ahmed Moussa’s past by 24 Chasa (2014) notes that he was a strict member of the Evangelist church in the Roma neighbourhood by his twenties. The reason that he became so keen on religion was his mother, Zhivka, who also converted to Islam voluntarily two years after her son. Moussa’s mother recalls that his early childhood was marked by a serious mental illness. According to her interview for the investigative report of 24 Chasa (2014), Ahmed was constantly being taken to the psychiatrist for treatment and therefore could not even join the military.

However, a drastic change in Moussa’s life occurred between 1995 and 1996 when he went to Austria with a few friends, working there and living in a mosque because they could not afford to rent an apartment. Austria was where young Ahmed started feeling deeply about Islam and decided to convert. Returning to Bulgaria, he joined the illegal local school for imams in Sarnitsa, still unregistered, in which the headmaster at that time was Saiid Mutlu, another defendant in the proceedings against radical Islam. Moussa spent a year in Sarnitsa before graduating and becoming an imam. Stoilova (2016) learned that in 2001, while working in Cologne, Moussa established contact with representatives of the Turkish radical Islamist organization Kalifatsstaat (‘Caliphate state’). He even went to Egypt to continue his spiritual education and refine his religious views as a preacher. After returning to Bulgaria, he spent 10 years serving as imam in Chirpan. In 2005, Moussa was given a three-year conditional sentence – for the first time in his life – on charges of promoting the ideas of founding a caliphate, denial of a secular state order and membership in a banned branch of the Saudi Arabian Islamist organization Al Waqf Al Islami, as reported by Capital (2016). Moussa denied being affiliated with the Saudi organization, and even claimed he had learned about its existence during the trial against him and his supporters. Maskrachka, Hadzhiev and Ilkov (2012) stressed that Moussa’s three-year conditional sentence had expired, but he seems to have relapsed into illegal activity, as evidenced by some of the charges brought against him, namely participating in an organized crime group and using terrorist signs and logos to attract supporters.

Local Plovdiv investigative media Traffic News (2016) interviewed people in the Iztok neighbourhood who openly claimed that Moussa’s supporters were paid to wear burkas and grow beards as Muslims in the Middle East do. The payment for such a show of affiliation with his closed society varied from BGN 150–400 (approximately €75–200). People were also paid for converting to Islam, making the poorest Roma families of the neighbourhood supporters of Moussa’s radical ideas because they could not find any other source of financial support. They easily fell into the trap owing to their poor education or even lack of education caused by their social marginalization and inability to integrate properly into society, thus becoming victims of radical views. Women who were summoned to court as witnesses to the trial against Moussa and his supporters claimed that they were unable to either speak or read Bulgarian (Traffic News, 2016) – they learned to read the Qu’ran in Turkish on their own and communicated in Turkish, although they had been to a Bulgarian elementary school.

Alexandra Angelova, a woman considered part of the organized crime group headed by Moussa, was also arrested for having translated a book entitled ‘Infidelity’ from Turkish to Bulgarian, which has been banned in many Muslim countries for inciting jihad. The book was found for sale at the illegal mosque in the Roma-inhabited neighbourhood of Pazardzhik, and 1000 copies of it were found in Ahmed Moussa’s home (Traffic News, 2016).

The Grand Mufti’s Office said that none of the people detained and charged after the police operation were its employees, which is in conflict with Ahmed Moussa’s statement that he obtained a licence to preach Islam granted by the Grand Mufti. The Grand Mufti’s Office recalled that Daesh was condemned in a special declaration and has called upon Bulgarian Muslims to reject calls for jihad and the establishment of a caliphate. The Abu Bekir mosque was built on private property, so the Grand Mufti’s Office had no jurisdiction over it because it does not provide funding to unofficial religious sites. This leads to the conclusion that unregistered religious places can be easily used as melting pots, with unknown sources of financing, and as connections to various organized crime networks in Bulgaria, because such places are illegal and frequently involve financial dependence on organized crime activities (Petrova, 2014). The social capital of the illegal entrepreneurs – their trusted contacts and reputation – plays a much more important role than financial capital in entry into, operation of and success of a criminal market. Social capital is a precondition for access to all levels of criminal markets (CSD, 2015b: 5). It can also play the role of an alternative to the original capital needed to start and continue activity in a given market. For example, contacts and reputation can provide prepayments by customers or goods on credit from the suppliers. In the case of the 13 imams, we note the supply of illegal arms, fake IDs and safe houses to foreign fighters transiting Bulgaria, thus strengthening the crime–terror nexus. Therefore, the presence of strong social capital in the face of criminal contacts and networks is a prerequisite for the successful operation of every organized criminal group whose modus operandi also involves terrorist practices. A good example in this respect is the markets in illegal arms, in which such schemes of lending are broadly distributed in a number of countries at both low and high levels. According to Dean, Fahsing and Gottschalk (2010), the associated relatively high profit margins and low production costs are likely to encourage similar practices because failure reflects unfavourably from the point of view of missed opportunities rather than of fixed current costs.

The higher the risk of a criminal activity, the more important is the role of social capital for successful entry into the market (Naylor, 2003). It is the intermediaries who secure the link between two or more units in criminal networks. In many cases, social capital is built on existing links in addition to professional and business relationships; thus, legal relationships (between, for example, business partners, owners and lessees) under certain conditions can be turned into illegal interconnections. For example, Moussa’s previous contacts with Saiid Mutlu and other radicalists in Bulgaria and abroad could only facilitate the establishment of an organized crime group, acting clandestinely and receiving goods and services on the basis of exchange with other crime groups. In addition to criminal funding, legitimate sources of capital also play an important role in the financing of criminal organizations. In the context of Moussa’s organized crime group, we can note funding from abroad, concealed under the cover of grants and financial support on behalf of foreign Islamist organizations, which are banned in Bulgaria or act as satellites of these organizations on Bulgarian territory.

Although employing legal sources for the financing of illegal activities has long been targeted by law enforcement institutions in relation to the financing of terrorism, very little is known about the use of legitimate means by organized crime. Legal financial funds are invested in criminal markets – both at the distribution level and in trafficking and the production of illegal goods. These activities require the use of different methods for the so-called reverse money laundering, in which legal funds are converted into cash or are transferred through the accounts of a number of organizations to conceal their sources (Rusev et al., 2013). In the classic case of money laundering, the aim is to fully legalize the revenue from a given criminal activity to prevent its possible confiscation in the case of investigation and sentencing (Van Duyne, 2014). The classic process of money laundering involves three stages: sales, layering and integration. Reverse money laundering, as defined by Cassella (2003: 92–4), aims at something much simpler – to conceal the link between the source of the financial funds and specific criminal activity. Information and details about the financial aspects of organized crime are frequently irrelevant to the prospect of successful prosecution, are not easily collected, or could face being excluded or ignored. In addition, official accounts limit the scope of an organized criminal’s identity to that of a one-dimensional criminal drained of cultural context, a factor that might have numerous implications in terms of the important financial information that is available (Hobbs and Antonopoulos, 2014). The Bulgarian authorities believe that sufficient financing of Ahmed Moussa’s criminal activities has been provided by the proxy branch already established in Istanbul, Turkey, facilitated by the work of the so-called ‘coordinators’, as Stoynova and Bezlov (2017) define affiliates of the organization abroad (see Georgieva and Ivanova, 2014). However, because the investigation remained ongoing when this article was completed, additional facts and evidence have yet to be revealed to the public.

Conclusion

Currently, no serious danger of the development of radical Islam and Islamic terrorism in Bulgaria exists because most representatives of the country’s Muslim society profess a traditional Islam that completely rejects and cannot accept radicalism. However, we cannot hide the fact that social exclusion and increasing poverty among some Bulgarian Muslims – Muslim Roma and some Bulgarian Muslims – increase the risk of providing fertile conditions for radical Islam and its ideology in the country. Integration leads to balancing opportunities for all citizens in various areas of life, raising their activity in the consolidation of democratic processes. According to Bosakov (2010: 35), the integration process should aim to improve the socioeconomic and cultural unity of the Bulgarian people in the conditions of democratic change and to actively involve the representatives of ethnic communities in the management of economic, cultural and political life. In other words, integration means creating the same conditions for a complete realization of everyone regardless of ethnic or religious differences (Zlatanova, 2013: 17). Therefore, it is critical to fight at the conceptual level to establish a moderate and loyal-to-the-state form of Islam in its two main versions – traditional and liberal Islam (Mathiesen, 2013: 192–4).

In areas with a more favourable economic situation (such as the Ludogorie area), inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions are weaker. In contrast, the regional economic situation in the Rhodope Mountains and the Muslim-inhabited regions of Pirin and Roma ghettos in cities such as Pazardzhik and Plovdiv maintains an enduring and strong conflict between communities because the level of economic equality between local residents creates a huge gap between the latter and other inhabitants of the same ethnic group living in other regions of the country and enjoying favourable living conditions (Alexiev and Sherifov, 2013). The representatives of the radical Islamist organizations direct their efforts at this division, their first aim being to replace the representatives of the traditional Muslim clergy with their own people, preaching radical Islam. Therefore, support for the traditional Islamic clergy should be a priority of Bulgaria’s state policy in countering radical Islam’s aim to establish melting pots and secure their financing through organized crime activities.

The case study of the 13 imams from Pazardzhik serves as an example of how easily a melting pot can be created, particularliy in areas inhabited by a particular minority group that is marginalized and suffers from economic inequality and even social exclusion. The analysis presented in this article focuses on seeking the connection between organized crime and terrorism, because the above-mentioned case study involves both, and how the two interact to achieve sustainability and specific goals. Moussa’s long criminal past, relationships with other defendants who have also been sentenced for involvement in banned Islamist organizations, preaching of radical ideas and jihadi values, and participation in organized crime such as Saiid Mutlu and others, help us understand the modus operandi of the criminal group that temporarily established control over Iztok’s residents, aiming to further impose Salafist values and sponsor its activities through criminal acts. The criminal nature of those acts divides into two categories: organized crime acts and the promotion of radical Islam. The former are represented by various actions, such as extortion of local residents to obtain funds and exploitation of the social inequality and poverty of that vulnerable Roma group by involving it in radical religious views and traditions as a secure source of income in the absence of little or none provided by the state.

Apart from capitalizing on the wide gap between the uneducated and unintegrated Roma, who can easily be coerced to perform criminal acts, we observe the emergence of a strong leader in the local closed community, breaking the stigma of a minority ethnic group left on the brink of oblivion. The dynamics of Iztok’s offender convergence settings easily led to the establishment of an illegal mosque, built on private property without the permission of and regulation by the state authorities, which thereafter served as a melting pot for radicalization and the promotion of jihadism, which represents the second category of criminality. The case study illuminates the connection between organized crime and radicalization because it investigates all aspects of Moussa’s wrongdoings and the illegal actions of a pathological character because the leader has been involved in such offences since the early 2000s. Also important is how a melting pot is created, which in the case study is observed as a place supporting the mixing of criminal activities and radicalization. The neighbourhood of Iztok offered good conditions for interconnecting the two aspects of criminality, thus facilitating our understanding of melting pots, their nature, country-contextual characteristics, and the actors involved. In the case of Bulgaria, we can conclude that social exclusion and the lack of a state presence in certain areas of the country can be exploited by organized crime networks and individuals/groups involved in terrorism and the promotion of radical views.