Abstract
This article explores the melting pot of jihadists and criminals that has featured in some of the most significant jihadist attacks and plots foiled in Spain over the last 15 years. Applying Felson’s offender convergence settings theory to this case, we argue that the confluence of criminality and jihadism observed in other European contexts has also been present in the Spanish case. Individuals with criminal pasts have utilized their skills for terrorist attacks, a variety of forms of crime have been used to fund terrorism, and certain settings such as prisons have facilitated the convergence between criminals and jihadists and enabled a process of identity transition.
Introduction
Spain is a significant place for jihadism. Not only does it figure in their propaganda as a long-lost Muslim country that must be re-conquered but it hosts an active community of supporters and sympathizers. The country has also experienced what remains the worst jihadist attack in Europe, the 2004 Madrid train bombings and, more recently, the high-profile 2017 Barcelona attacks. Although, by most accounts, Spain has experienced comparatively less violent radicalization than other European states over the last decade, it has recently witnessed a spike. Since 2015, Spanish police have arrested more than 200 people for jihadi terrorist crimes – one of the highest numbers in Europe 1 – and in 2017 alone they apprehended 76 people suspected of being involved with ISIS-related terrorism. 2 This represents the highest number of arrests in the last decade.
This ‘new wave of mobilization, recruitment and jihadist radicalization’, as described by García-Calvo and Reinares (2013), is a response to the establishment of the ISIS ‘caliphate’ in parts of Syria and Iraq and possesses a number of features that distinguishes it from the previous radicalization wave that emerged in the shadows of al-Qaeda. It can now be defined as a home-grown phenomenon; extremists are, on average, younger; and online radicalization is playing a far more important role (Reinares, García-Calvo and Vicente, 2017). A feature, however, that is shared with the previous generation is the existence of a connection between violent extremism and crime. This linkage constitutes the focus of this study.
As mentioned in the Introduction to this special issue, there have been two phases in the literature on the crime–terror nexus. The traditional understanding remained focused at the organizational level and on how militant and organized criminal groups would engage in different forms of relationship that could be placed on a continuum ranging from sporadic collaboration through stable partnerships to even convergence or hybridization (Makarenko, 2004, 2012; Makarenko and Mesquita, 2014; Sanderson, 2004). The most recent literature concentrates on the analysis of individuals and networks, highlighting how criminals’ and terrorists’ profiles, distinct and separate in the past, have now started to merge. In this article we will argue that the confluence of crime and jihadism observed in the Spanish case does confirm the most recent findings on the subject (Bakker, 2006; Clarke, 2016; Neumann, Basra and Brunner, 2016; Oftedal, 2015; Ranstorp, 2016). Hence, whereas Makarenko’s Crime–Terror Continuum (2004) described accurately how terrorist and criminal organizations would interact in the past, what we are currently witnessing across Europe is the existence of jihadist grassroots networks (Sageman, 2004) that act differently from the traditional top down, hierarchical (even bureaucratic) militant organizations – such as ETA or the IRA – that had traditionally characterized terrorism in late 20th-century Europe. As Basra and Neumann (2016: 26) contend, ‘is not the convergence of criminals and terrorists as organizations but of their social networks, environments, or milieus. In other words: rather than being one or the other, criminal and terrorist groups have come to recruit from the same pool of people.’ What Basra and Neumann define as the ‘new crime–terror nexus’ and the editors of this Special Issue as a ‘melting pot’ of criminals and militants describe a more fluid, unstructured reality that occurs at the micro level of analysis. This new reality challenges past assumptions, including the belief that these two categories of actors would operate under different rationales where militants would seek to destabilize society whereas criminals would ‘merely’ want to benefit from the status quo for the sake of financial gain.
The jihadist–criminal shared milieu is not a new development (Bakker already reported in 2006 that about a quarter of the European Islamist terrorists in his study had criminal records) but, with the emergence of ISIS, this trend has been reinforced. More recent figures vary according to the report and country, but they are always substantial. For instance, an analysis of 51 successful jihadist terrorist attacks in Europe and North America for the 2014–17 period found that at least 57 percent of the attackers had a prior criminal background and one-third had been imprisoned before (Vidino, Marone and Entenmann, 2017: 58). Stuart (2017: 954) informs us that in the UK, between 1998 and 2015, 38 percent of Islamism-related offences were committed by individuals with a known criminal history, and half of them (19 percent) had been convicted of non-terrorism-related crimes. Indeed, two-thirds of the German foreign fighters had police records prior to travelling to Syria, and one-third had criminal convictions, as reported in 2015. 3 Also in 2015, the French justice ministry spokesman claimed that 15 percent of the 167 ‘radical Islamists’ detained in France on terror charges had been incarcerated before (Astier, 2015).
Based on the Spanish case, we will argue that the links between crime and jihadism in the country take a variety of forms that can be articulated through the three elements in the convergence settings theory (functional, financial and ideological confluence) that are outlined in the Introduction to this special issue. Although in practice these dynamics tend to blur, we can differentiate them at the analytical level. Felson (2003) coined the term ‘offender convergence settings’ to describe certain spaces where potential offenders meet each other. For Felson, these were actual physical locations (that is, a local bar or a restaurant run by organized crime figures) where offenders can meet new people, exchange information and material, buy and sell stolen goods or plan new criminal acts. These places form an ‘ecosystem’ that cultivates and fosters illegal activities. Following Soudijn and Zegers (2012), our own understanding of ‘criminogenic settings’ is broader, as it includes the physical (prison, prayer rooms, mosques, youth and sport clubs, bars and more) and the virtual places (online forums, social media platforms, dark web) that constitute this shared milieu, the extremist–criminal ‘melting pot’.
The existence of these spaces offers ‘structure and continuity in the face of individual, group, or network instabilities’ (Felson, 2003: 158) because they permit the formation of new contacts, networking, the development of trust and laying the foundations for future collaboration. Yet, most importantly, and this is specific to this particular crime–terror relationship, it allows the shifting of ‘careers’: the individual’s evolution from a (violent) criminal into a (violent) extremist. Gallagher (2016: 53) describes this change as a ‘form of progression’ from involvement in petty crime from a young age to criminal groups and terrorism. As we will see, this is a process that can be defined by Kruglanski et al.’s (2009) ‘quest for personal significance’ theory. And, because the skills required are remarkably similar for both roles, the transition is smoother than it might be initially imagined.
In order to better describe these patterns we will refer to a series of particular cases. We will use these examples to evidence and contextualize the trends we mentioned above. They include well-known individuals such as Abdelbaki Es Satty, the imam who led the cell behind the 2017 Barcelona attack, or the criminal network that surrounded Jamal Ahmidan, one of the key plotters of the 2004 Madrid bombings; but we will also be referring to other less-known police investigations that have not been explored in depth in the international literature. Data were retrieved from the Spanish Supreme Court and National High Court documents, media reports, academic articles, think tank papers, and face-to-face interviews with practitioners from the Spanish police and prison system. This variety of sources allowed us to triangulate the data in order to offer a set of robust findings.
This article is structured in the following manner. In the main section, the article will discuss in turn the above-mentioned confluence dynamics through analysis of existing evidence. We will then conclude the article by addressing the implications of these findings for the existing literature and the relevance of a convergence settings approach for the study of this subject.
Confluence dynamics
Functional confluence
With functional confluence we refer to the relationship between criminal skills and militant experience. This is present in a process where criminals become enablers of terrorism by offering their criminal skills (forgery, access to weapons or illegal material, etc.) to an existing cell (Shelley et al., 2005) or a radicalized friend or relative. They are contacted owing to their ‘talents’, religious background or simply the existence of previous personal connections. An alternative is when criminals support the operations of an existing terrorist network with varying degrees of integration within the group. Collaboration occurs for different reasons but they are generally pragmatic: criminals are not necessary believers in the cause but they act out of loyalty to friends or members of their social network or simply because they benefit financially or otherwise (that is, gaining ‘street cred’ or a reputation in a community).
Evidence from Spain shows how jihadist cells have in the past established contacts with criminals in order to have access to skills and material (explosives, fake passports, etc.) necessary for their operations. Such collaboration was essential for the 2004 Madrid attacks that killed 192 people and injured around 2000 when, on the morning of 11 March 2004, terrorists placed explosives in four commuter trains. The al-Qaeda network behind the attacks obtained the industrial explosive Goma-2 Eco for their rucksack bombs from smugglers who had stolen it from a mine in Asturias (northern Spain). The group, led by a former miner, José Emilio Suárez Trashorras, smuggled and transported the explosives and detonators to Madrid in exchange for drugs. A key detail is that these contacts were possible owing to the fact that Rafá Zouhier, a member of the jihadist cell, and Suárez Trashorras’s brother-in-law became friends during their stay in the Villabona prison in Asturias. After Zouhier introduced Suárez Trashorras to Jamal Ahmidan, a series of meetings in fast food restaurants and over the phone between October 2003 and January 2004 were organized to arrange a deal. 4
Unlike the above case, we have also witnessed criminals within these overlapping networks who have provided support to cells while being well aware of the potential results of their activities. In these instances they are willing collaborators because they have personal connections, are sympathetic to the cause, or both. Certainly, their technical knowledge, contacts and access to illegal funds can prove very useful. In this way, some of the common criminals who contributed to the Madrid attacks were not particularly religious but they felt compelled through loyalty to the group and friendship and family ties to participate. Reinares (2014) has extensively studied what he calls the fourth cluster of individuals within the 2004 Madrid bombings network. This cluster initially consisted of a gang active throughout Spain who specialized in the trafficking of illicit drugs and stolen vehicles. Three of its members, Rachid Aglif, Rafá Zouhier and Othman el-Gnaoui, were key figures in the organization of the attacks, and Jamal Ahmidan was considered the ‘linchpin’ of this gang, which ‘morphed into a terrorist outfit in the summer of 2003’ (Reinares, 2014: 43).
As described in the 11 March attacks sentence, 5 the criminal and the ideological features of the Madrid network were almost indistinguishable. Aglif had been Ahmidan’s criminal partner for years, and also participated in the meetings with Suárez Trashorras; as early as 1999 they had planned to travel to Chechnya ‘to do the jihad’. Aware of Ahmidan’s radical ideas, Abdelilah el-Fadual el-Akil, a close associate, helped him to get in contact with Eddin Barakat Yarkas (‘Abu Dhadah’) during a 2000 trip to the Netherlands. Yarkas was an al-Qaeda member with connections to the 9/11 network who was arrested on 19 November 2001 and charged with fundraising for the terrorist organization. Furthermore, Jamal Ahmidan’s cousin, Hamid, was a fellow co-conspirator and drug trafficker: more than 59 kg of hashish, 125,000 ecstasy pills, about €19,000 and fake personal documents were found in his home. In turn, Jamal Zougam, a key member of the network and Ahmidan’s criminal associate, hid and transported the explosive devices.
Therefore, evidence from the Madrid attacks shows that there are two different forms of functional confluence. On the one hand, the smuggled explosives illustrate how contacts between jihadist and common criminals can be pragmatic and opportunistic and established for specific purposes – more a one-off than a lasting partnership. In these circumstances, interaction is kept to a minimum until the transaction is completed or the service carried out in order to avoid the authorities’ attention. Arguably, career criminals may not even be fully aware (even if they may suspect it) that they are dealing with terrorists, since they may know these individuals only from their criminal backgrounds. On the other hand, as the examples in the next two sections will amply illustrate, what we observe far more often is how both categories of actors can operate in the same milieu, sharing strong personal connections and even mutual sympathy for their goals: career criminals may concur with the militants’ grievances and support their jihad against the West while the latter approve of the corroding effects of crime in the host society. In the end, this facilitates the establishment of (generally small) terrorist cells hosting criminals-cum-jihadists.
Financial confluence
In this category we find jihadists who engage in white-collar, petty and/or organized crime to fund their operations. Funding sources include illegal activities such as drugs, firearms and human trafficking, financial crime (banking, VAT, business and social insurance fraud) and organized property crime (Europol, 2016; Oftedal, 2015; Ranstorp, 2016). Proceeds from crime can cover the costs associated with the organization of terrorist attacks, such as procurement, training, safe houses, travel and more. They can also be diverted to help fund jihadist organizations abroad through money transfer businesses operating, for instance, along the Turkish–Syrian border or by foreign fighters acting as cash couriers (Ranstorp, 2016). Here we see low-scale crime as a source of funding for terrorism carried out by either career criminals turned jihadists or militants without a pre-existing criminal background who engage in these actions on an ad hoc and temporary basis.
A facilitating factor is that the sums of money necessary for a terrorist attack are fairly minor. In a study on the financing of jihadi plots in Europe for the period between 1994 and 2013, three-quarters of the plots were estimated to cost less than US$10,000 (Oftedal, 2015: 3). The Madrid attacks required €30,000–50,000 6 – as estimated by the investigative judge – and these were considerably more sophisticated in execution, and therefore costlier, than the average plot (Oftedal, 2015: 57). Such ‘affordability’ allows self-starters to finance without the need for foreign patronage (although a small minority of plots have been directly funded by al-Qaeda or ISIS in the past). Self-financing therefore provides European jihadists with the capacity to operate independently.
An important concomitant issue is that jihadist doctrine enables this process by licensing criminality. Theft is made licit in jihadism through the tenet of ‘ghanimah’, the wealth ‘taken by force from an enemy in times of war’. 7 In this manner, the well-known jihadi cleric Anwar al-Awlaki incited his followers to steal from ‘unbelievers’ for the sake of ‘jihad’ (Basra and Neumann, 2016: 35). Similarly, high-profile jihadist figures in Spain such as Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed, known as ‘Mohamed the Egyptian’ and linked to both the 9/11 and the Madrid attacks, had publicly approved of the use of crime to finance jihad. 8 So crime is, in their eyes, religiously sanctioned – not only permitted but actually endorsed as a religious duty.
If we concentrate further on the Spanish context, evidence of the use of petty crime to finance jihadi-inspired violence surfaced as early as 2004 and 2005. Originally drug trafficking was the main illegal activity to fund terror but soon we observe the use of other forms of criminality for the same goal. Apart from the above-mentioned example of the Madrid attacks, where explosives were paid for with large quantities of hashish, 9 drug trafficking was used to collect money for terrorist plots and support activities in other instances throughout this period. Just a year after Madrid, a June 2005 operation led to the arrest of 11 members of a group connected to the organization Ansar el Islam, an al-Qaeda affiliate. At the time of the arrest, the group was training and sending suicide bombers to Iraq. Almost everyone in the group was involved in petty crime to sustain their activities: drug trafficking mainly but also document forgery and robbery with violence and physical assault. The amounts obtained through these felonies were transferred to their native countries. 10 A similar strategy was adopted by the Algerian cells dismantled the same year that were moving money to the Salafist group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). 11 In this instance, terrorists engaged in robberies, vehicle smuggling, identity document forgery 12 and credit card fraud in addition to the predictable drug trafficking activities. 13
Also through credit card fraud, Mohamed Boualem Khouni, an associate of Abu Dhadah and Mohamed Achraf (whom we will return to when discussing radicalization in prisons), supplied funds and resources to militant groups in Algeria and false documents to individuals travelling to other EU countries. In March 2004, Mohamed Boualem was arrested as part of a police operation and accused of being part of the radical Takfir cell run by Achraf (Forriol Campos, 2013: 191). The group was planning to plant a bomb at the Spanish National High Court to target judges and prosecutors working on terrorism cases (Bareño and Clemente, 2004).
Incidentally, another member of the Achraf cell, Abdelkrim Bensmail, received two money orders totalling €300 from Allekema Lamari (the leader of the Madrid attacks network) while he was in prison serving a sentence for membership of the Armed Islamic Group. 14 These are interesting cases because they illustrate how densely connected were the different elements of the jihadist community operating in Spain before the Madrid attacks. More relevantly for this piece, they exemplify how funds could be used in a wide variety of ways to support jihad, including assisting imprisoned fellow terrorists.
With the evolution of the threat, new opportunities have emerged. A novel criminal method to fund ISIS was facilitated by the organization’s temporary control of large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory. Thus, a support network operating in Valencia acted as middlemen in ISIS’s plunder and illegal trafficking of the region’s cultural and artistic heritage. In parallel, they were supplying ISIS and the former Al Nusra Front with explosive material and military uniforms by sea: in February 2016 the police confiscated as many as 20,000 UK army uniforms, including CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear) suits. Using the informal hawala system and money transfers, in three years more than €10 million had changed hands (CMVT, 2017: 24).
Most recently, it was reported that the Barcelona attacks were financed through the sale of stolen gold and jewels. This was an integral part of the plot since the €1200 obtained from this method was invested in purchasing the 106 gas canisters that the group was planning to load – together with at least 200 kg of Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP) – into two rented vans to be used as vehicle-born improvised explosive devices (Olmo, 2017). In fact this case is also representative of another important trend: the required amounts were actually rather small; they were squatting in an unoccupied rural house that doubled as a warehouse and chemical lab; TATP can be produced with cheaply available drugstore products; and the vans were obtained from low-cost rental businesses (Olmo, 2017). Another common feature found here is that perfectly legal funds (their own savings, personal property and businesses) were also invested in the plot.
Likewise, as in other European plots, benefit fraud has been used to fund jihadist activities in the country. For instance, Said Lachhab, one of the first foreign fighters to return to Spain, was profiting illegally from social benefits while on sick leave. A police search found €9000 in €50 notes but not before some funds had been used trying to recruit youngsters to join ISIS in Syria (Olabarri, 2017).
Although the criminal methods described so far are rather simple, even mundane, more sophisticated financial crime has also been carried out in support of jihad. In July 2007, two Syrian citizens were arrested in Madrid accused of document forgery, money laundering and collaboration with a terrorist organization. What is interesting about this particular example is that both men were involved in laundering money from Spanish and foreign jihadists through the Spanish housing market and then remitting the profits outside the country. 15 In a more recent case from June 2017, a complex businesses structure for tax evasion was set up by a Moroccan man with Danish citizenship and resident in the Spanish enclave of Melilla on the North African coast. Profits were being channelled to an international network of financing, recruitment and travel of foreign fighters to Syria. 16
This financial confluence highlights the transnational character of the problem. Groups can rely on crime to be able to operate independently but that does not preclude them from having deep European and international connections. Thus, a group of Moroccan jihadists arrested in Barcelona in April 2017 had links to Yassime Attar, the leader of the cell that carried out the attacks at Brussels airport and metro system the year before. The nine arrested had previous police records, drug trafficking mostly (Carranco, 2017). In addition, the Achraf group had contacts with other groups in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands and even the USA (Carranco, 2017). The Ansar Al Islam cell had ties to the Middle East, Maghreb and the UK (Carranco, 2017), and the GSPC networks dismantled in 2015 were connected to Algerian radical Islamists living in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Belgium and Denmark. 17
Taken together, there is clearly significant evidence in Spain of jihadist appropriation of criminal activities. The level of sophistication has varied but generally individuals have engaged in fairly ‘ordinary’ offences. Yet, even small sums of money collected over time can be effective and dependable sources of funding, especially when the amounts required are not particularly high. On occasion the need for funds required operatives to engage for the first time in these kind of activities but, far more frequently, this was carried out by criminals putting their old skills to a new use. So this is about criminals acting as violent extremists rather than terrorists using the services of specialized criminal actors (that is, document fraudsters) to help them fund their operations. This distinction is not trivial because it supports Dishman’s (2001) argument – albeit made in the traditional crime–terror continuum literature – that militants would in principle prefer to use their ‘in-house’ capabilities to undertake criminal or political acts rather than pursuing collaborative arrangements with criminal groups, as suggested by other scholars.
Ideological confluence
The existence of settings where jihadists and common criminals converge facilitates the process described in the Introduction where criminals ‘change career’ and integrate within jihadist networks through a process of indoctrination and radicalization. As reported by Europol (2016: 14), individuals involved in criminal activities and socialized in a criminal environment in Europe are ‘amenable to radicalization processes’.
Neumann, Basra and Brunner (2016: 3) have described how the jihadist narrative meets the needs of self-doubting criminals seeking a positive identity because it can offer ‘redemption’. In other words, joining the global jihad is seen as an opportunity to ‘make up for their “sins”’ by using their skills and abilities for a political/religious cause. This process can be conceptualized through the notion of a ‘quest for personal significance’ as elaborated by Kruglanski et al. (2009). In a nutshell, feelings of disenfranchisement by second- and third-generation Muslim youth and the failure to live up to social norms by living a criminal lifestyle can lead to frustration and a personal experience of significance loss. Therefore the decision to join the global jihadist movement can be perceived by the individual, especially at moments of crisis, as a life opportunity to redress this loss and restore one’s personal meaning and significance.
Importantly, joining jihad is regarded as an effective way to break with their criminal past without necessarily having a transformative effect on their day-to-day practices, even if this is accompanied by a profound change in some of their personal views. As we have seen in the financial confluence section, the restoration of a sense of personal significance is facilitated by the fact that following the norms and rules of their adoptive jihadist community allows for the continuation of their criminal activities.
As a matter of fact, jihadism serves not only as a tool for redemption but also as another channel to fulfil the needs and expectations that encouraged them to become involved in crime in the first place: ‘jihadist groups offer experiences of power, violence, adventure, and provide them with a strong identity, and – not least – a sense of rebellion and being anti-establishment’ (Neumann et al., 2016: 3). French thinker Olivier Roy calls this the ‘Islamicisation of radicalism’, marginalized young men and petty criminals using Islam as a cover to pursue political violence (Nossiter, 2016). The transition has been assisted by what Gallagher (2016: 54) calls the ‘dilution of the requirements and expectations for participation in the struggle’, where ‘the expectation of a solid understanding of the religious cause became secondary’.
Clearly, this is a significant development because, in principle, criminals may make for more effective terrorists, certainly regarding the logistical component of an attack. Even if these individuals are generally involved only at a low level within criminal networks – they do not typically fill major roles – they benefit from their access to contacts and resources (firearms, financial and transportation means, safe houses). For years they have honed skills in illegal activities that are now useful for violent extremism, including ‘staying under the radar’. Furthermore, there is the fact that they have already engaged in unlawful behaviour and, likely, violent crime; this means that they have already crossed an important threshold in the process of radicalization. Indeed, recent research with US-based extremists indicates that those who had engaged in criminal acts before adopting extremist beliefs are ‘at an increased risk of engaging in ideologically motivated violence’ (Jensen, 2018: 1). 18
Convergence settings outside prisons
Therefore, there is ample evidence that many European jihadists have been brought up and socialized in a criminal environment and that they retain their links to their criminal environment after radicalization: While most interactions between individuals involved in criminal activities and terrorist actors are believed to be pragmatic, ad hoc and short-term, others may be sustained and longer-term as these individuals inhabit an intersection of the criminal underworld between radicalized actors and individual criminals, crime groups and networks. (Europol, 2016: 13)
Such an ‘intersection of the criminal underworld’, shared spaces or offender convergence settings where the terrorism–criminal ‘melting pot’ flourishes, can be remarkably varied. Although prayer rooms and mosques appear frequently in the literature as locations where recruiters can operate, convergence settings may also involve more trivial places such as bars, clubs, fast food outlets and/or restaurants; for example, the Madrid attacks conspirators met in a mobile phone shop owned by Jamal Zougam. 19
In this regard, it is interesting to note that, although private homes and places of worship are the most common radicalization spaces, as many as 37.5 percent of those jihadists arrested in Spain between 2004 and 2012 underwent their process of radicalization and were recruited into terrorism in commercial premises (including hairdressers, clothing and food shops, restaurants or Internet and telephone cafés) usually located in the same immediate area (García-Calvo and Reinares, 2013: 13). As an illustration, in the Madrid neighbourhood of Lavapiés, a series of local businesses employing and owned by jihadists and sympathizers served as informal recruitment centres into the jihad in the late 1990s / early 2000s (Reinares, 2014).
Convergence does not necessarily occur only in very specific locations but can be typical of whole neighbourhoods or city areas. The relationship between socio-economic deprivation, marginalization (often concentrated in particular urban spaces) and involvement in jihadist terrorism has already been recognized in other studies looking at the European context (see, for instance, Ljujic, van Prooijen and Weerman, 2017). In the same way that Molenbeek and Schaerbeek in Brussels or the banlieues of Paris are characterized by ‘high unemployment, educational disparities, involvement in the prison system’ and have been described as a ‘breeding ground for terror’ (Williams et al., 2016), a well-known convergence setting in Ceuta (a Spanish enclave in North Africa) is the Príncipe Alfonso district.
Indeed, the Príncipe Alfonso district was portrayed by Jordán and Trujillo (2006: 1) as ‘one of the most favourable . . . for the jihadist recruitment in Spain’. Príncipe suffers from lack of urbanization, unemployment, illiteracy, delinquency, and other symptoms of social and economic marginalization. For years numerous families living in Principe benefited from the income generated by the trafficking of drugs and human beings. However, the constabulary successes in the 90s’ against drug bands and the effectiveness of the measures against illegal immigration decreased remarkably these types of financial income. Consequently, the neighbourhood’s economic situation has even more deteriorated. (Jordán and Trujillo, 2006: 1)
As described by the authors, this environment of marginalization and social exclusion normalizes transgressive behaviour and a sub-culture of crime and violence where radical preachers and jihadist recruiters can leverage existing close social networks (family, friends, criminal) for their cause.
It was indeed in Príncipe Alfonso where an 11-strong jihadist cell carried out a series of symbolic acts of sabotage and they were planning a high-casualty attack before they were detained by the police in 2006. Many in the group had criminal records justified by claiming that they were obtained in support of jihad (Jordán and Wesley, 2007). Likewise, in a separate June 2013 operation that dismantled an 8-man foreign fighter recruitment network, it was found that several of these Príncipe Alfonso residents had been previously involved in drug trafficking (Testa, 2013a). The group had sent 50 foreign fighters to Syria, 12 from Ceuta and the rest from Morocco (Testa, 2013b).
These findings need to be contextualized. Although Príncipe Alfonso is the best-known convergence setting in the literature, anti-terrorist operations have occurred throughout the whole of Ceuta and Melilla in areas that share some of Príncipe Alfonso features, 20 which would explain the fact that these are two of the country’s radicalization hotspots, only exceeded by Madrid and Barcelona in the number of anti-jihadist police operations carried out. Ceuta, a city with a large Muslim population, has itself experienced a rapid increase in radical prayer spaces over the last decade. 21 In similar vein there have been other marginalized conflictive areas in mainland Spain where crime–terror melting pots may have emerged. In 2015, for instance, two Moroccan men who were part of an ISIS unit were arrested in La Cañada Real, where one of them was a resident. The infamous Cañada Real is a shanty town in the Madrid region known for being a criminal hub and ‘drug supermarket’ (Ortega, 2015).
Prisons as ‘melting pots’
A key convergence setting that has received much attention by authorities and experts alike is prisons, regarded as the premier place where criminals and jihadists mix. Basra and Neumann (2016) explained how prisons facilitate the radicalization of criminals. First, they are places where cognitive openings can occur, leading young, sometimes vulnerable people to reassess their lives and engage in personal change, which may result in recruitment into the jihad. Moreover, the stigma of prison is a barrier to successful reintegration into society, which in practice can narrow former criminals’ life choices into continued involvement in crime and radicalization.
If we look more closely at the Spanish experience, we can find multiple cases where these (or similar) processes are taking place. In fact, according to the Ministry of Interior, between 2005 and 2011, 20 percent of those imprisoned for jihadism-related crimes had previously served sentences for other types of crime (De la Corte, 2015: 8).
If we turn to specific examples we should include, within the Madrid attacks network, Mohamed Bouharrat, who was sentenced to prison in Spain in 2002, and Jamal Ahmidan, who began his process of radicalization in 1996 during a period of imprisonment in Morocco (Reinares, 2014: 39). The 2006 Ceuta jihadi network was led by Karin Abdelselam Mohamed, a former petty criminal who also became radicalized in prison and formed the group following his release (Jordán and Wesley, 2007). He is considered to be the first jihadist sentenced for collaborating with ISIS inside Spain. 22 In another relevant investigation, Lahcen Ikassriem, a former Guantanamo detainee arrested in Madrid in 2014 and convicted for recruiting individuals to fight for ISIS in Syria, claimed during his trial that ‘he led his life to Allah thanks to the brothers he met’ 23 when he served four years in prison for hashish trafficking.
Another high-profile example of this dynamic that deserves closer attention is the leader of the cell behind the 2017 Barcelona attacks: Abdelbaki Es Satty, who died in an explosion in Alcanar (Tarragona) when handling the explosives that the network was planning to use in the attack. Es Satty, an imam in the Catalan town of Ripoll since 2014, 24 served two prison sentences. The first was in 2003, when he was charged with human trafficking because he tried to smuggle an immigrant into the country with a forged passport; for this he was sentenced to a six-month prison term. A second sentence came in 2010, when he was accused of bringing 120 kg of hashish into Spain; this time he served four years in the Castellón prison in south-eastern Spain. During his stay he met Rachid Aglif, one of the 18 jihadists sentenced for their role in the attacks of 11 March 2004, an encounter seen as pivotal in his eventual decision to commit an attack in Spain. 25
Networks of jihadist recruiters have been very active inside some Spanish jails. In the Segovia prison, Moroccan Abdelmajid Chiakhi was initially sentenced for domestic violence but in November 2015 he was accused of recruiting jihadists among inmates finishing their prison terms. 26 In fact, some particular penitentiaries have acted as especially intense nodes for recruitment, such as Topas (Salamanca). In 2008, Mohamed Achraf was sentenced for his recruiting work in this prison. 27 This case led to the re-organization of the FIES (File of Inmates in Need of Special Monitoring), a control mechanism set up in 1991 by the Spanish prison system and in place since 1996. 28
Although it can be relatively easy to pinpoint the prison experience as the starting point for a process of radicalization, we should be aware of the fact that this is not a lineal process. Even if stints in Spanish and Moroccan jails served to strengthen Jamal Ahmidan’s support for jihadism, it was not until 2003 – outside prison and months after he was released – that he took the step of joining the Madrid attacks cell under the persuasive influence of Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet (Ordaz, 2007), the ideologue of the network with connections to al-Qaeda (Rodríguez, 2005). It should not surprise us that this was a process compounded by online radicalization. Exactly the same pathway was followed by two other members of the group, Rachid Aglif and Othman el-Gnaoui, who also served time in prison during the 1990s but, as claimed by Reinares (2014: 57), this had not in fact resulted in the adoption of extremist attitudes. In other words, Ahmidan, Aglif and el-Gnaoui’s ‘career shift’ took place only outside the prison space.
In contrast, it must be noted that the prison experience not only may result in a cognitive opening that leads to recruitment into violent extremism but can in fact serve to reinforce already ongoing processes of violent radicalization, sometimes resulting in severe changes in the individual’s behaviour. Hence, a perpetrator of the Madrid attacks, the Algerian Allekema Lamari, had already been arrested in 1997 in the Spanish city of Valencia for his membership of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and sentenced to more than nine years in prison. After serving five years, in June 2002 Lamari left the penitentiary of A Lama (Pontevedra) even more radicalized, according to reports from the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, the Spanish intelligence agency (Rodríguez, 2004).
Another revealing (but somewhat less dramatic) example is that of Ismael Boufarcha, an 18-year-old webpage administrator arrested in a police operation against a jihadist recruitment cell 29 and sentenced in 2015 to five and a half years in prison. His Spanish mother has described in the media the religious awakening that her son was going through: ‘he prays a lot and has a long beard, reads religious books, previously he neither talked about religion nor prayed’ (García Rey, 2017). She claimed that her son was ‘not a radical’ before but he was becoming ‘more radical’ in jail, using as evidence a picture taken in prison of him with a member of the Madrid attacks network (Congostrina, 2015). It must be noted, however, that this may not be fully representative of current trends: although it was common in the past to witness changes in physical appearance and individual routines in prison (that is, requesting halal meal, refusing to eat pork, joining community prayers), this is currently far less prevalent, arguably to avoid detection. 30
As Trujillo et al. (2009) have indicated, the reinforcement of radicalization processes amongst Muslim prisoners in Spanish jails is facilitated by well-known behavioural patterns: horizontal cohesion or group identity and conformity (self-identification as a member of a Muslim group), intergroup differentiation (Muslim groups of inmates distancing and separating themselves from the rest of the prisoners), vertical cohesion (in-group hierarchical subordination to Islamist leaders) and, associated with all this, increased legitimization of terrorism. As mentioned by one of our interviewees, radicals offer new inmates protection and support if they get involved in their gangs. 31 And these dynamics are stronger in penitentiaries with ‘a higher concentration of Muslims and jihadists than in prisons with a lower concentration of the former and absence of the latter’ (Trujillo et al., 2009: 578).
Conclusion
It must be acknowledged that an in-depth understanding of personal motivations would have required semi-structured interviews with some of the individuals mentioned in this article, but we contend that there are still a number of important findings that have emerged from our analysis of the Spanish context. As in other European contexts, there has been an evolution from one form of deviant behaviour to another, a mutated response to situations of alienation and/or marginalization. In terms of ideological confluence, former criminals experienced a conversion to jihadism as a personal change that provided them with a new sense of purpose: they can now use their past experiences for a ‘higher’ political cause masquerading as religious duty. Described by recruiters as an opportunity for personal redemption through the greater good, it is a meaning-making exercise, a ‘quest for personal significance’ as described by Kruglanski et al. (2009).
A salient aspect of this dimension affects those involved in criminal activities who became radicalized in prison after being indoctrinated by jihadist leaders. They enter the system as criminals and leave prison as supporters, fellow travellers or, more worryingly, active members of a terrorist network. In this process they embrace a radical and violent interpretation of Islam. The outcomes of the process range from a passive belief in a radical creed to the decision to become a foreign fighter abroad (Alonso et al., 2008).
When considering financial confluence, the main conclusion is that jihadists in Spain have from an early stage engaged in a variety of offences to illegally finance their activities: credit card fraud, robbery, identity documents forgery, social benefit fraud and a number of other methods have substituted for or complemented drug trafficking, a staple in the criminal-jihadist diet. Often those activities led to no change in individual practices and/or daily routines; it meant only that some or all amounts obtained through crime would serve a different purpose. Yet, especially with financial crime, we also observe that criminal operations have been put together by terrorists with no previous criminal experience. And even if very often these criminal methods may appear rather banal, on occasions we see that fundraising schemes may also be complex, sophisticated, deal with very substantial amounts and feature strong international connections. Finally, financing networks in the 2004–6 period were generally more focused on remitting the funds raised abroad to foreign terrorist organizations, but there has been an increase in self-starters who plan to use those resources to act within Spanish territory. Indeed, this case study has shown precisely that the confluence of crime and terror that has attracted increased interest following ISIS’s emergence does in fact pre-date the appearance of ISIS-affiliated networks in Europe: we have already witnessed these trends in the al-Qaeda cell that carried out the Madrid attacks almost 15 years ago and in other similar networks operating in Spain during this period.
Regarding functional confluence, we found participation in jihadist cells by individuals with a criminal past. This substantiates one of the key arguments proposed by the new ‘crime–terror’ nexus: that within European jihadism the confluence occurs at the individual and not the organizational level. What we would like to emphasize here is that the Spanish case does also demonstrate that social bonds are crucial in the process: kinship, personal relationships and, especially, family ties not only are important to strengthen in-group radicalization processes but also serve as catalysts for a crime–terrorist confluence. The fact that, oftentimes, this process brings together individuals with similar personal backgrounds needs to be recognized; as does the point that certain neighbourhoods and/or areas within the country suffer from marginalization and deprivation that facilitates their transformation into melting pots for criminals and violent extremists.
Therefore, the notion of ‘melting pot’ or convergence setting is especially useful to encapsulate processes occurring within the functional and ideological confluence dimensions. Prisons in particular are quintessential offender convergence settings. So we believe this could be a very useful way to approach the issue, as it would be to distinguish between three different forms of confluence. We are certain that a convergence settings approach that distinguishes confluence processes according to functional, financial and ideological dimensions can serve to neatly encapsulate the dynamics that characterize how jihadism and petty crime intermesh currently in Europe.
Yet, although these three patterns can be separated analytically, it must be emphasized that, in practice, they blur. Essentially, the same case can be representative of more than one trend. To illustrate: the Barcelona attacks included perpetrators with criminal records (functional confluence), they were financed through crime (profit confluence) and the leader had spent time in prison, arguably where he was radicalized (ideological confluence). As our interviewees took great pains to emphasize, there are individuals who were professional criminals who became radicalized in prison, who continued with their illegal activity to sustain themselves upon release, and who walked down their path to violent extremism and started planning terrorist acts in the same way they previously prepared criminal ones.
These different forms of confluence highlight the importance of scholars and policymakers’ existing work on the reintegration into society of former violent extremists, the practical effectiveness of risk assessment tools and the actual capacity of social work programmes to prevent a transition from crime into political violence. It is clear from the above that the surveillance of violent extremists and terrorist recruiters inside and outside prisons is important but so is a greater understanding of the processes that make terrorist activity attractive to young adults involved in petty crime in our societies.