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Second Frenchman Is Identified in ISIS Video of Peter Kassig A Second Frenchman Is Identified as Appearing in ISIS Beheading Video
(about 11 hours later)
PARIS — A second French citizen is among a group of Islamic State militants seen in a sequence of video clips that also shows a beheaded American aid worker, President François Hollande of France said Wednesday. PARIS — Both were “boys next door” who recently converted to Islam and came under the spell of Islamic jihadists through the Internet. Both were apparently self-radicalized and traveled to Syria on their own. Both turned to the web to promote the Islamic State, with one posting images of a female Kurdish soldier’s severed head on his Twitter profile.
Mr. Hollande, in Canberra, Australia, for a meeting of the Group of 20, said that it was not yet clear what function the two men performed for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “You Kurds, tell your wives to go back home, to play dolls, otherwise they will end up like this woman,” the post reads.
“All we can say for now is that there are two French people who have been identified,” Mr. Hollande said, according to The Associated Press. He added that he was concerned that French citizens of various backgrounds were being “brainwashed” into joining the ranks of militants in Iraq and Syria. Now both men, Michaël Dos Santos and Maxime Hauchard, have been identified by the authorities as French recruits who appeared, unmasked, in the prologue of a gruesome Islamic State video leading to the beheading of an American aid worker, Peter Kassig.
Earlier this week, Maxime Hauchard, a 22-year-old from Normandy who converted to Islam at 17, was tentatively identified among a group of militants appearing in a long segment of the video that shows the execution of Syrian soldiers. A shorter segment shows Peter Kassig, an American aid worker and former Army Ranger, after his apparent beheading. The group has often guarded its members’ identities, so the two Frenchmen’s prominent place in the video served both as a reminder of the Islamic State’s success in recruiting disenchanted young Europeans, and as an advertisement seeking even more recruits.
On Wednesday, Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, said there was strong evidence to suggest that Michaël Dos Santos, 22, from a working-class suburb southeast of Paris, was among the militants who appeared unmasked in the video. The video also showed a masked executioner with a British accent who has been nicknamed “Jihadi John” in the British news media. France was consumed by soul-searching Wednesday after French authorities confirmed that Mr. Dos Santos, 22, the Roman Catholic son of Portuguese immigrants from a working-class suburb east of Paris, had been paraded in front of the world as an Islamic State foot soldier.
The French authorities say they believe that Mr. Dos Santos recently left France for Syria to join Islamic State militants. News media reports buzzed with disturbing entries from his Twitter accounts showing Mr. Dos Santos, a onetime avid soccer fan and dance enthusiast, dressed in combat gear. One of his Twitter posts showed an excerpt from the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, describing it as a “call for jihad.”
France is considering how to deal with an estimated 1,132 citizens who have left or who plan to join the ranks of jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq. The government is so concerned about the consequences of young people becoming radicalized and returning to France that it recently approved legislation to prevent those suspected of being jihadists from leaving the country. Only days earlier, Mr. Hauchard, a middle-class 22-year-old from a village in Normandy in northern France who converted to Islam at 17, was identified as being among a group of executioners, wielding a knife near the neck of one of 18 Syrian prisoners killed in the video.
Both young Frenchmen appear to fit a pattern of young men from non-Muslim backgrounds who turn to radical Islam for self-affirmation. To some observers here, that both men were recent converts who found meaning in turning their backs on France underscored the country’s failure to offer its young people a sense of hope for the future.
The French media have reported that Mr. Dos Santos surprised friends by abruptly converting to Islam. According to the radio broadcaster France Info, French intelligence services appear to have known that he was in Syria, and he had posted photographs of himself on one of his Twitter accounts, dressed in combat gear. France Info said his mother had helped the authorities to identify him. Romain Caillet, an expert on radical Islamist groups, said that the images of the two young converts, with shaggy beards and violent ideology, had brought home to France how everyday citizens with nothing to lose were ripe for radicalism.
Prosecutors said Mr. Hauchard left France for Syria in August 2012 under the pretext of wanting to do humanitarian work. He initially came under the scrutiny of French law enforcement officials after he became involved in extremist groups and was seen on websites that were promoting jihad. He said a growing and vocal minority of recruits to the Islamic State from France were converts to Islam, including from Catholic, atheist or nonreligious families.
Earlier this year, Mr. Hauchard described in a Skype interview with the television channel BFMTV how he had joined the Islamic State, which “established the laws of Allah on earth,” after watching videos on the Internet. He said he had traveled to Syria on his own. “Those who leave are often the most determined ones, or those who have nothing to lose,” Mr. Caillet said. “Many are single, unemployed and have broken ties with their families.”
Mr. Hollande said he was deeply concerned about the radicalization of French-born jihadis. “They could be from any background, from any ethnic origin — but they can easily be brainwashed into becoming converts, and this is a very important matter,” he was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse. “We must be vigilant, and we must be strong.” He added: “The big fishes are often Muslims of North-African descent. But converts play an important role.”
The Islamic State has said that its beheadings of Western hostages are revenge for military actions against it. France has joined the American-led airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and is fighting a propaganda battle against the group. Not least, such converts show that the grievances that have animated radical movements like the Islamic State may be more widely shared and could be used to recruit a broader pool of the discontented.
Experts said the background of Mr. Dos Santos and Mr. Hauchard appeared to fit an alarming pattern in France and across Europe of young people from non-Muslim or nonreligious backgrounds being drawn into the lethal web of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, through a mix of powerful jihadist propaganda videos and adolescent angst.
France is struggling to deal with more than 1,000 citizens who have left or plan to travel to join the ranks of jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq.
The government is so concerned about the consequences of young people becoming radicalized by the Islamic State and returning to France that it approved legislation this month to prevent suspected jihadists from leaving the country. Authorities say the extent to which the law has prevented any would-be jihadists from departing France was unclear. France has joined the United States-led airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and is also waging a propaganda offensive against the group, which claims to represent a caliphate — a state governed by strict Islamic principles.
Mr. Dos Santos, who also went by the name Abu Othman, is believed to have left for Syria in 2013, around the same time as Mr. Hauchard. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Wednesday that Mr. Dos Santos was “known for being involved in terrorism in Syria” and for his “violent behavior on social networks.”
France 3, the television broadcaster, said Mr. Dos Santos, who was being tracked by French intelligence services, had five Twitter accounts. Mr. Caillet, the Islamic studies expert, follows Mr. Dos Santos on Twitter and said that he had posted photographs of himself dressed as a soldier.
A remaining account was working Wednesday morning but appeared to have been suspended later. It did not contain any personal details, but it did include posts with verses of the Quran and photos of bombings and dead bodies, including the head of the female Kurdish soldier.
Dominique Adenot, the mayor of Champigny-sur-Marne, where Mr. Dos Santos was born and had lived in recent years, said Mr. Dos Santos was the son of Portuguese parents, who were separated. The newspaper Le Monde reported that his mother and grandmother were cleaners.
“He was so kind, so kind — they must have given him drugs,” his grandmother, Maria Dos Santos, told the newspaper, referring to the Islamic State. She said he had become radicalized through a Muslim friend and had begun to grow a beard.
Mr. Adenot told reporters Wednesday that Mr. Dos Santos had become a French citizen in 2009, and had lived with his mother and his younger brother in a ramshackle four-story building. He said there was no radical mosques in Champigny.
But Mr. Caillet, the Islamic expert, said the area where Mr. Dos Santos had lived in Champigny was a “ghetto,” where radical Islamist groups had spread in recent years, ensnaring lost and disenfranchised youths.
News reports said that Mr. Dos Santos had been spotted by French intelligence in 2013 after a police crackdown on Islamic militants. Mr. Dos Santos appeared to have had links with some of the French jihadists arrested in the crackdown, authorities said.
Mr. Hauchard appears to have followed a similar path as Mr. Dos Santos. Born in 1992, Mr. Hauchard lived in Bosc-Roger-en-Roumois, in Normandy, a quiet and middle-class town. He converted to Islam and went to Mauritania twice to study Islam.
This year, Mr. Hauchard described in a Skype interview with BFM television how he had traveled freely to Syria and joined the Islamic State, which “established the laws of Allah on earth.”
“It’s funny because in general people think that we have a sort of guru behind us that fills your head with stuff,” Mr. Hauchard said in the interview from Raqqa, the first Syrian city that fell entirely under rebel control. “But in fact I didn’t meet anyone. I would have loved to meet a brother.”
In the video, Mr. Hauchard spoke from a barracks where he was living with about 40 people, “mostly Arabs,” he said, adding that he was being trained before “leaving for an operation.”
“The personal objective of everybody here is the Shahid,” he said, using the Arabic word for martyr. “It’s the biggest reward.”
On Monday, news reports quoted friends describing Mr. Hauchard as gentle, joyful and a regular mosquegoer. “He was never rebellious,” Philippe Vanheule, the mayor of Bosc-Roger-en-Roumois, told Le Monde.
Mr. Vanheule denied that his town was fertile ground for would-be jihadists. “We have basketball, karaoke, judo, dance,” Mr. Vanheule said. “I don’t think that we have a lost youth here.”