Saskia Lützinger The Other Side of the Story A qualitative study of the biographies of extremists and terrorists Final project report with supplementary information on field research The original in German, which was published in 2010 as volume 40 of the BKA series Polizei+Forschung (Police+Research) by the Luchterhand-Verlag publishers, originally consists of three contributions. For the version available at our end, only two of the contributions were translated - the actual final project report and the supplementary information on field research. The complete German version can be ordered with the specialist book trade by quoting ISBN-No. 978- 3-472-07830-2. It is also possible to download the original report as PDF file via http://www.bka.de All publications of the BKA series Polizei+Forschung (Police + Research) (with the exception of volumes classified ‘BKA Restricted’) are available on the internet as PDF files at www.bka.de (Kriminalwissenschaften / Kriminalistisches Institut). Editors: Manfred Lohrmann Project idea: Uwe E. Kemmesies Project manager: Saskia Lützinger Translation work: Doris Mann Dieter Bromberg All rights reserved ©2012 Bundeskriminalamt All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Advisory board: Prof. Dr. Johannes Buchmann Director, Center for Advanced Security Research, Darmstadt Wolfgang Gatzke Director, Landeskriminalamt Nordrhein-Westfalen (Land Office of Criminal Investigation of North- Rhine-Westphalia) Prof. Dr. Manfred Hennecke President, Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing) Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Kerner Director, Institut für Kriminologie der Universität Tübingen (Institute of Criminology of Tübingen University) Waldemar Kindler President, Landespolizei des Freistaates Bayern (Bavarian State Police), Bayrisches Staatsministerium des Innern (Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior) Klaus Neidhardt President, Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei (German Police University) Prof. Dr. Peter Wetzels Professorship of criminology, Rechtswissenschaftliche Fakultät der Universität Hamburg (Faculty of Law of Hamburg University) 2 Prologue The events that happened in the last few years in conjunction with the international phenomenon of Islamist-jihadist terrorism once again have shifted the focus of attention more strongly to the motives behind terrorist acts, i.e. to the question, “Why?”. The fact that international terrorism seems to be thriving in Germany, too, has been obvious at least since the conviction of the members of the so- called ‘Sauerland Group’. There is no doubt that under certain circumstances even individuals who have been brought up in Germany are ready and willing to embrace Islamist/jihadist interpretation options; but it is not only an Islamist or religiously - in the broadest sense of the word - motivated kind of extremism that arouses our interest: Considering the broad spectrum of politically motivated extremism and terrorism, it is society as a whole that is challenged. Before we can take up these challenges, we must first of all answer the crucial question, ‘What are the motives that lead terrorists to commit their brutal acts’? Only if we shed light on their deeper motivation will we be able not only to react more appropriately but, above all, act in an adequately pro-active and pre-emptive manner. This study entitled “Extremism – a biographical perspective” is based on a biographical approach to understanding its subjects’ life histories with a focus on the motives behind radicalisation and the corresponding use of extremist-motivated violence: Are some distinct biographical constellations and/or motivations - whatever their ideological origin - more likely than others to lead an individual towards extremism? What kind of lifeworlds do we see if we try to look at them from the extremists’ or terrorists’ own points of view? The results presented in the book at hand are manifold, and if we want to tackle this phenomenon with a focus on crime prevention, the key finding is a challenging one as the psycho-social dynamics of the radicalisation careers of offenders with different extremist or terrorist backgrounds seem to have more in common than the respective ideological backgrounds of the different milieus would suggest. Or, in other words: We did not find any fundamental differences. In fact, the similarities between the individuals’ key motivational impetuses and trigger factors outnumber all visible manifestations that the various types of extremism can take. This publication of the project results intends to inform the broad expert public of the inspiring and stimulating findings obtained by the researchers of the Institute of Law Enforcement Studies and Training of the Bundeskriminalamt, thus initiating preventative approaches and potential follow-up research. Jörg Ziercke President, Bundeskriminalamt 3 Table of Contents 1 Introduction 5 2 Who becomes a terrorist? 7 3 Methodology – design of the study 9 3.1 Data collection 10 3.1.1 Sampling 10 3.1.2 Interview conduction 12 3.2 Evaluation 12 3.2.1 Individual case approach 12 3.2.2 Clustering of interviewees across ideological boundaries and comparative 13 evaluation 4 Results 20 4.1 Information and preliminary findings by the police about the interviewees 20 4.2 Biographical reconstructions 21 4.2.1 “I was quite an ordinary boy” – life outside the scene and before joining it 21 4.2.1.1 The family milieu 21 4.2.1.2 The impact and role of peer groups 24 4.2.1.3 Education, work and military service 26 4.2.1.4 Violence 28 4.2.1.5 Alcohol and drug consumption 29 4.2.1.6 Religion and politics 32 4.2.1.7 Personal factors 33 4.2.2 “Fully involved” – development within the scene 37 4.2.2.1 First contact and joining the scene 37 4.2.2.2 Factors influencing development 40 4.2.2.3 Studying the ideology 42 4.2.2.4 Involvement in politics 43 4.2.2.5 Criminal career development 44 4.2.2.6 Exertion of violence 47 4.2.2.7 Participation in attacks 50 4.2.3 Life “hereafter” – motives for renouncing the ideology and terminating 54 the relationship to the scene 5 Summary and discussion 56 6 Outlook 61 Thomas Schweer 63 Forensics – biographies of members of extremist milieus Field study in the context of the study on “Extremism – a biographical perspective” Appendix A Methodology and organisation 72 Appendix B Evaluation example: biographical history of R_i_05 80 Appendix C Biographical histories of interviewees 89 Appendix D Demographic data 147 Bibliography List of authors 4 1 Introduction “They played cricket, taught children, and went on kayak trips. Their parents and friends were hardly aware that they had been radicalised. So, why this mass murder?” Musharbash 2006a Incidents like the terrorist bombing on Munich’s Oktoberfest1 or the attacks planned by the Sauerländer Terrorzelle2 have invariably caused great terror and raised numerous questions about the underlying causes. In the last years, many attempts have been made to ascertain why human beings perpetrate such deeds and to trace an individual’s transformation into a terrorist or extremist. One recurring surprise was that even socially well integrated individuals who led inconspicuous lives sometimes turned to extremist views and environments. One case in point is 30-year-old Fritz Gelowicz, for instance, whom “Der Spiegel” weekly (Kaiser et al., 37/2007, 23) describes as an ordinary student with an odd job; the son of an entrepreneur and a physician converted to Islam even in his teenage years. The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” daily (Dörries/Ramelsberger 2007) quoted a Muslim fellow student as saying that he was “a highly likeable fellow”, while the “Frankfurter Rundschau” daily characterised Fritz Gelowicz and his accomplices as “inconspicuous and friendly, but immensely dangerous”. Although the phenomena of terrorism and extremism attract great public interest and are widely covered by the media, relevant empirical research work is still demonstrably sketchy. One reason may well be that it is extremely difficult to gain access to these groups, given that both extremists and terrorists strive to remain in hiding. Most studies conducted so far are therefore based on media analyses or, at best, on second-hand data (e. g. filed documents) supplied by security services, but almost never on data collected for the sole purpose of research. While a “re”-utilisation of the available material offers many advantages like, for instance, more economical research practices, such data can hardly provide answers to the aforementioned questions about personal motives and individual development: The risk of reconstructing the context of meaning differently or misinterpreting it compared to the offender’s point of view is definitely too high. The same is more or less true for data collected from the personal environment of the individuals concerned: While these may be more telling and more closely related to the lifeworld of the alleged extremist or terrorist, the interpretation patterns they supply only marginally reflect the self-perception of the terrorists and/or extremists. The qualitative-empirical study at hand carries the project title Extremism - a biographical perspective (EbiP) and was conducted between December 2004 and December 2008 as a cooperation project between the Rhein-Ruhr-Institut für Sozialforschung und Politikberatung an der Universität Duisburg- Essen (RISP, Rhine-Ruhr Institute for Social Research and Policy Advice of Duisburg-Essen University) and the Forschungsstelle Terrorismus/Extremismus (FTE, Terrorism/Extremism Research Unit) of the Bundeskriminalamt. It specifically aimed to gain an understanding of the phenomena of “terrorism” and “extremism” from the protagonists’ own point of view, an objective the researchers 1 On 26 September 1980 a bomb exploded in a rubbish bin at the Munich Oktoberfest, killing 13 people and leaving 200 injured.