Tracking returned Syria fighters a challenge for Europe

German and French authorities knew Belgium shooting suspect had fought in Syria but were unable to keep track of his movements.

MARSEILLE, FRANCE // For some observers of the phenomenon of foreigners choosing to fight with Islamists in Syria, the Brussels Jewish museum killings reveal another failure of western intelligence to prevent the preventable.

To others, the attack demonstrates the limits faced by authorities in tracking combatants’ movements and identifying their intentions.

In fact, the case of the suspected Brussels killer, Mehdi Nemmouche, a convicted armed robber who joined the Syrian conflict after his last prison sentence, highlights both the failures of monitoring and the difficulties police and intelligence officers face.

The lure of the fight against the Damascus regime of Bashar Al Assad is not a purely western issue. The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) based at King’s College, London, estimates that of 8,500-9,000 foreigners who joined the conflict between late 2011 and December 2013, 70 per cent were from the Middle East and North Africa.

Estimates for individual Mena countries ranged from very small –maximums of only one or two Mauritanians and Omanis, and 12 from Bahrain – to as many as 890 from Lebanon, 970 from Tunisia, 1,016 from Saudi Arabia and 2,089 from Jordan. The ICSR accepts a high potential margin of error and minimum estimates are significantly lower – for example, 386 Saudis and as few as 180 Jordanians.

But this and other research leads a number of academics to assert that both the appeal of foreign combat and the potential threat posed by participants to their own countries, is global.

The fortuitous arrest of Nemmouche has been followed by a series of questions about whether French intelligence could have done more, perhaps even averted the shooting in Belgium on May 24.

Even the government-owned television network France 24 pointed out that Nemmouche, like Mohamed Merah before him, had been identified as a potential threat by France’s DGSI domestic intelligence agency. His alleged descent into extremism appears to have been obvious to those dealing with him.

Merah murdered seven people, including three Jewish children, in a series of attacks in south-western France before being shot dead by police in a siege of his home in Toulouse in 2012.

“The DGSI came under heavy criticism for failing to stop Merah,” France 24 said. “... Two years later, it seems that history is repeating itself.”

French courts have begun the process of considering a Belgian request for the extradition of Nemmouche for murder and attempted murder.

Three people, a French voluntary worker and a holidaying Israeli couple, died in the attack. A fourth victim, a Belgian man, was critically injured and died on Friday, the public prosecutor’s office said.

Nemmouche, 29, from the northern French town of Roubaix, is what the Paris public prosecutor, Francois Molins, has called a “lone wolf”.

“It is more difficult to monitor a solitary individual who is also mobile than an identified and localised radical group,” an antiterrorism officer told the French daily newspaper, Aujourd’hui en France. Nemmouche apparently carried no mobile telephone, avoided social networks and had no known address.

Nemmouche, of Algerian family background, was regarded by his lawyer and prison officers as an everyday young convict when previously jailed for various criminal enterprises.

He had a troubled childhood, shunted between foster homes. But he was not known before imprisonment as a devout Muslim, let alone an extremist, and was described as a reasonable student with good communication skills.

Gradually, following a classic route also taken by Mohamed Merah, he became radicalised in jail. He was put in isolation after being accused of “aggressively proselytising” other prisoners.

Prison officers say he rejected access to a television, regarding it as “superficial”, but changed his mind at the time of Merah’s killings. Once media interest faded, he stopped watching.

Soon after his release at the end of 2012, he travelled via Turkey to train and fight with Islamists, according to Mr Molins.

Returning to Europe in March, he was questioned by German officers on arrival in Frankfurt after a circuitous route including Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Hampered by his entitlement under Europe’s Schengen agreement to cross borders, and with no evidence of planned wrongdoing, the German authorities merely alerted French counterparts to his movements.

Since his arrest in Marseille on May 29, Nemmouche has refused to answer questions. He was detained after a routine drugs search on arrival in the southern French port by coach on a service from Amsterdam and Brussels.

Mr Molins said he was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle, a revolver and also had a mobile camera. A memory stick recording allegedly suggested he intended to film his attack but that the camera did not function.

The French government estimated in April that 285 French citizens were fighting in Syria, with 120 more “in transit” and 100 having returned after combat. Other estimates put the figure as high as 700 combatants.

The ICSR research confirms that increasing numbers are drawn from western countries. “Overall, we believe that residents and citizens from at least 74 countries have joined militant opposition groups in Syria,“ the institute says.

At the G7 (a group of seven of the world’s leading economies) summit in Brussels this week, the French president, Francois Hollande, said more than 30 French nationals had been killed in the conflict. He called for increased cooperation and intelligence sharing among states “to prevent, deter and punish this type of movement, which can jeopardise our own security”.