New York Times har fået ud rapporter om afhøringerne af IS-krigere blandt andre franske politi har stået for. De viser, at de europæiske sikkerhedsmyndigheder, fra 2014 af, havde stærke signaler om planlagt terror mod civile i Europa. Alligevel blev advarslerne fejet til side, og dem, der blev opdaget, blev afskrevet som enkeltpersoner.

Dokuments læsere husker Sid Ahmed Ghlam, der havde planlagt at angribe to kirker i Villejuif udenfor Paris. Han dræbte en danselærer for stjæle hendes bil, men skød sig selv i foden, så alvorlig, at han måtte søge lægehjælp. Således blev han afsløret. Ghlam gik på det andet år i en femårig dataskole. Nyhedsrapportene fik frem alvoret: At han ville dræbe kirkegængere under gudstjensten, men ellers fremstod han som en sær snegl.

Det samme gjorde Mehdi Nemmouche (bildet), manden som angreb det jødiske museum i Brussel 24. maj 2014.

Eller Ayoub El Khazzani, som var nær med at massakrere et Thalys-tog fra Amsterdam til Paris i august i fjor. Kun rådsnare amerikanske militære hindret ham.

Alle tre fremstod som enspændere, men det viser sig at alle tre var sendt af IS i Syrien.

Det værste er, at det franske, italienske, spanske, græske og belgiske politi var klar over, at IS havde en egen kommandocentral for operationer i Europa, men oplysningerne var ikke indsamlet og gjort til en overordnet modstrategi. Det er, som europæerne ikke ønsker at vide, har amerikanerne konkluderet. Hvad betyder det for forholdet mellem Europa og USA, hvis europæerne fortsætte ad samme spor?

Like the killers in Paris and Brussels, all of these earlier operatives were French speakers — mostly French and Belgian citizens, alongside a handful of immigrants from former French colonies, including Morocco.

They were arrested in Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, Greece, Turkey and Lebanon with plans to attack Jewish businesses, police stations and a carnival parade. They tried to open fire on packed train cars and on church congregations. In their possession were box cutters and automatic weapons, walkie-talkies and disposable cellphones, as well as the chemicals to make TATP.

Most of them failed. And in each instance, officials failed to catch — or at least to flag to colleagues — the men’s ties to the nascent Islamic State.

In one of the highest-profile instances, Mehdi Nemmouchereturned from Syria via Frankfurt and made his way by car to Brussels, where on May 24, 2014, he opened fire inside the Jewish Museum of Belgium, killing four people. Even when the police found a video in his possession, in which he claimed responsibility for the attack next to a flag bearing the words “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” Belgium’s deputy prosecutor, Ine Van Wymersch, dismissed any connection.

“He probably acted alone,” she told reporters at the time.

Det er alltid interessant å studere fysiognomien til personer som gjør skjebnesvangre avgjørelser.

Viseriksadvokat Ine Van Wymersch tilhører den unge, smarte, vakre gruppen av mennesker som uanstrengt bekler de høyeste embeter. De har ofte en holdning som er liberal, antiautoritær, som ikke liker vold eller konspirasjoner. Samfunnet har ingen “fiender”, problemer skyldes sosioøkonomiske forhold, og de går det an å gjøre noe med. De vellykkede har en høy grad av tro på deres egne og samfunnets evner til å integrere mennesker med ulik bakgrunn. De føler de vet og kan virke ovenpå.

Men Wymersch tok feil. Nemmouche handlet ikke alene og allerede den gang burde det vært tydelig: Han hadde en forhåndsinnspilt video med seg og et IS-flagg.

Men hvor mange ganger har ikke norske medier understreket av disse enslige terroristene handlet på egen hånd, og derfor, underforstått, ikke var så mye å bry seg om.

Det var det i høy grad, får vi nå vite. Politiet visste etterhvert ganske mye om den enheten innen IS som sendte operative til Europa for å forøve terror. New York Times er overrasket over hvor detaljert kunnskapen var. Er grunnen til at informasjonen ikke ble delt at den var politisk uvelkommen?

I så fall er politikerne og embetsverket en trussel mot samfunnets sikkerhet.

One of the first clues that the Islamic State was getting into the business of international terrorism came at 12:10 p.m. on Jan. 3, 2014, when the Greek police pulled over a taxi in the town of Orestiada, less than four miles from the Turkish border. Inside was a 23-year-old French citizen named Ibrahim Boudina, who was returning from Syria. In his luggage, the officers found 1,500 euros, or almost $1,700, and a French document titled “How to Make Artisanal Bombs in the Name of Allah.”

But there was no warrant for his arrest in Europe, so the Greeks let him go, according to court records detailing the French investigation.

Mr. Boudina was already on France’s watch list, part of a cell of 22 men radicalized at a mosque in the resort city of Cannes. When French officials were notified about the Greek traffic stop, they were already wiretapping his friends and relatives. Several weeks later, Mr. Boudina’s mother received a call from a number in Syria. Before hanging up, the unknown caller informed her that her son had been “sent on a mission,” according to a partial transcript of the call.

The police set up a perimeter around the family’s apartment near Cannes, arresting Mr. Boudina on Feb. 11, 2014.

Det var fra avhør av folk som Boudina at fransk politi begynte å forstå at IS planla å angripe i Europa.

Her ser vi hvordan defaitist-holdningen igjen viser seg: Mens man tidligere benektet at det var et mønster mellom angrepene, sier man nå, når masseterroren har slått ut, at det er uttrykk for at IS er på defensiven, er svake. John Kerry sa det i en av de første kommentarene til Brussel-angrepene: -De viser at IS er trengt på defensiven, sa Kerry.

Det er som om terroren ikke er en seier og et nederlag for demokratiet, men omvendt: de som rammes er vinnerne. Det er en sprø logikk.

New York Times viser at angrepene på Paris og Brussel ble lagt for flere år siden. De var ikke de siste desperate forsøk fra celler som trues med utslettelse.

It was not until nearly two years later, on Page 278 of a 359-page sealed court filing, that investigators revealed an important detail: Mr. Boudina’s Facebook chats placed him in Syria in late 2013, at the scene of a major battle fought by a group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

According to a brief by France’s domestic intelligence agency, he was the first European citizen known to have traveled to Syria, joined the Islamic State and returned with the aim of committing terrorism. Yet his ties to the group were buried in French paperwork and went unconnected to later cases.

Including Mr. Boudina, at least 21 fighters trained by the Islamic State in Syria have been dispatched back to Europe with the intention of causing mass murder, according to a Times count based on records from France’s domestic intelligence agency. The fighters arrived in a steady trickle, returning alone or in pairs at the rate of one every two to three months throughout 2014 and the first part of 2015.

New York Times-storyen formidler hvordan Syrias nærhet til Tyrkia gjør det lett å kommunisere med Europa. De som skal sendes tilbake får med seg mobiler med tyrkiske SMS, for man regner med at europeerne ikke har like god oversikt over tyrkisk mobilnett. De lærer å bruke TrueEncrypt og laste opp beskjeder til en tyrkisk hjemmeside.

Flere var klønete og ble tatt og når de ble tatt sang de om hva de visste. Men de visste ikke mye. De de møtte brukte alias. Og enkeltaksjonene som Villejuif, Brussel-angrepet og Thalys-toget gjorde at politiet fikk mye å gjøre og ble på tuppa. De klarte ikke fange opp planleggingen av større angrep:

In the months before the Jewish museum attack, Mr. Nemmouche’s phone records reveal that he made a 24-minute call to Mr. Abaaoud, according to a 55-page report by the French National Police’s antiterror unit in the aftermath of the Paris attacks.

“All of the signals were there,” said Michael S. Smith II, a counterterrorism analyst whose firm, Kronos Advisory, began briefing the United States government in 2013 on ISIS’ aspirations to strike Europe. “For anyone paying attention, these signals became deafening by mid-2014.”

It was in the summer of 2014 that the link to the terrorist organization’s hierarchy became explicit.

On June 22 of that year, a 24-year-old French citizen named Faiz Bouchrane, who had trained in Syria, was smuggled into neighboring Lebanon. He was planning to blow himself up at a Shiite target, and during interrogation, he let slip the name of the man who had ordered him to carry out the operation: Abu Muhammad al-Adnani.

Mr. Adnani is the spokesman for ISIS and is considered one of its most senior members. Just a few days after Mr. Bouchrane checked into a budget hotel in Beirut, Mr. Adnani released an audio recording announcing the establishment of the caliphate.

“Adnani reportedly leads the external operations planning of the Islamic State,” said Matthew G. Olsen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Adnanis trussel var bakgrunnen for terroralerten i Norge og bevæpningen av norsk politi. Men den ble ikke tatt alvorlig av norske medier og politikere. Hvem var denne rufsete fyren som satt og truet Europa?

Abdelhamid Abaaoud ble den operative lederen for aksjonsgruppa. Han var høyt motivert, fryktløs og kulturelt på hjemmebane.

Intelligence officials in the United States and Europe have confirmed the broad outlines of the external operations unit: It is a distinct body inside ISIS, with its command-and-control structure answering to Mr. Adnani, who reports to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State.

The unit identifies recruits, provides training, hands out cash and arranges for the delivery of weapons once fighters are in position. Although the unit’s main focus has been Europe, external attacks directed by ISIS or those acting in its name have been even more deadly beyond Europe’s shores. At least 650 people have been killed in the group’s attacks on sites popular with Westerners, including in Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia, according to a Times analysis.

Within the hierarchy, Mr. Abaaoud was specifically tasked with mounting attacks in Europe, according to the French police report and intelligence brief.

“Abaaoud, known as Abou Omar, was the principal commander of future attacks in Europe,” Nicolas Moreau, a French jihadist who was arrested last year, told his French interrogators, according to the report by France’s antiterror police. “He was in charge of vetting the applications of future candidates.”

IS ser ut til å ha fulgt en bevisst taktikk om å la enkeltpersoner angripe med spektakulære, grusomme angrep, lik mannen som skar hodet av arbeidsgiveren sin i Lyon og forsøkte å sprenge et kjemisk anlegg. Slike angrep virvler opp mye “støy”.

I skyggen av disse, fortsette planleggingen av de store. Også de omgitt av spektakulær grusomhet:

Videos released by the Islamic State after the Paris attacks in November included footage of eight of the 10 attackers while they were still in territory the terrorist group controlled in Iraq and Syria. They announced that they were acting on the orders of Mr. Baghdadi, the caliph of the Islamic State, and then proceeded to shoot or behead a captive, most of them in grotesquely choreographed scenes shot against a desert backdrop, according to the footage archived by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Officials have deduced that the footage was filmed between February and September 2015, suggesting the Paris attacks were being planned months before they took place. It is now known that at the same time Mr. Abaaoud was laying the groundwork for the devastating plot, he was recruiting, cajoling and training Mr. Hame and others for smaller, quick-hit attacks.

Ibrahim Hame ble sendt til Europa sammen med en annen mann, som fløy til Spania. Der ble han tatt og snakket og avslørte også Hames oppdrag.

But Mr. Hame’s comrade was picked up after he flew to Spain, and under interrogation, he divulged Mr. Hame’s plan as well. After being notified, the French police tracked Mr. Hame to his mother’s apartment in Paris. Behind a couch, they found his USB stick from the Islamic State, and in his bag a piece of paper showing his login credentials for TrueCrypt. They arrested and began interrogating him last August, almost three months to the day before the worst terrorist attack in French history.

In many ways, it was another clear failure for the Islamic State’s operational security. Mr. Hame agreed to cooperate with investigators, and confirmed that the group was bent on attacking in Europe and was already interested in picking out a concert hall to strike.

Yet many aspects of the group’s security protocol were working. In the end, Mr. Hame had few specifics he could share with the authorities. He did not know the names or even the nationalities of the other operatives he had met; they had been introduced to him only by their aliases.

Two of Mr. Abaaoud’s other small plots around the same time did not go any better. Sid Ahmed Ghlam was ordered by Mr. Abaaoud to open fire on a church in Villejuif, south of Paris, according to the report by France’s antiterrorism police. Instead, he shot himself in the leg. Ayoub El Khazzani, the other attacker sent by Mr. Abaaoud, was tackled by passengers after his weapon jammed while he tried to open fire inside a high-speed Thalys train last August, officials said.

Though they failed, the thwarted plots kept counterterrorism officials stretched thin in the months before the November attacks in Paris.

“It served to put all of our agencies on edge,” said France’s chief antiterrorism judge, Marc Trévidic, who debriefed Mr. Hame, Mr. Ghlam and Mr. Khazzani before retiring last summer. “Just like a smoke screen, it allowed them to calmly prepare.”

Fransk politi lærte mye, men ikke nok. Man kan tenke seg hvordan Charlie Hebdo, Hypercacher og så fredag 13. må ha rystet fransk politi. De lyktes ikke å trevle opp trådene til Brussel, og nå kom angrepene også her.

Når man leser om planene, systematikken og langsiktigheten er det helt andre tanker som melder seg enn at nettverket er ved å bli utslettet, som Hollande sa. Det er heller at Europa står overfor en fiende som det ikke har forstått hverken karakteren eller rekkevidden til, eller bakgrunnen for: Og da tenker vi spesielt på deres operative bakgrunn i Europa. De er blant sine egne, som ikke røper dem.

Hvor mange er sendt til Europa, hvor mange Syria-farere har vendt tilbake? Hvor mange er rapportert inn av deres egne?

Det er slike spørsmål som gjør amerikanerne bekymret for Europas fremtid. Med god grunn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/world/europe/isis-attacks-paris-brussels.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_na_20160329&nl=bna&nlid=30317720&ref=img&te=1&_r=0