The Islamic State Crime-Terror Nexus in the United States: Developments and Wider Relevance.

AuthorMarcus, Raphael D.

Jason Brown, the leader of the Chicago-area "AHK" street gang that was heavily involved in drug trafficking, was sent to prison for a June 2016 gang-related firearms offense. Search warrants obtained for Brown's seized phones revealed extensive communication with Jamaican jihadi ideologue Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, and that Brown regularly visited Faisal's extremist Authentic Tauheed" online forum in the month prior to his firearms arrest. (1) Brown's time in a Georgia state prison and his communication prior to that with Faisal both reportedly contributed to his radicalization. (2) Upon his release from prison in June 2018, Brown, who also used the name Abdul Ja'Me, forced fellow gang members to convert to Islam and distributed Islamic State propaganda to them while using his leadership position to recruit and radicalize new gang members to support the Islamic State as part of his own personal "jihad." (3) Brown, who had plans to travel to Syria, was ultimately arrested in November 2019 for sending money overseas that he believed was intended to support the Islamic State, while six fellow gang members were concurrently arrested for drug trafficking. (4) (a) Brown's case is a vivid U.S. example of the nexus between crime, prison, gangs, and terrorism seen more often in the European context.

Extensive prior research has revealed that those involved in devastating Islamic State attacks in Europe in the last decade often had lengthy criminal records and were involved in criminal networks that fundraised for an attack or facilitated travel of aspiring foreign fighters. (5) Prior involvement in crime provided perpetrators with plot-relevant know-how, and relationships forged through street crime, gangs, or in prison were instrumental in the recruitment, radicalization, planning, and preparation for attacks. Some of Europe's most lethal Islamic State attacks have been the result of the convergence of criminal and terrorist networks at the grassroots level. (6)

This phenomenon differs from formal organizational collaboration or alliance formation between criminal and terrorist groups often found in areas of weak state governance. (7) It is more individualized, fluid, and unstructured than formalized organizational collaboration. (8) Salman Abedi, the perpetrator of the 2017 Manchester Arena suicide bombing, was aided by associates who were members of a British-Libyan drug trafficking gang in south Manchester. One gang member allowed Abedi to store a vehicle packed with explosive materials at his residence; another "wiped down" the vehicle in the wake of the bombing; and two others, each with extensive criminal pasts and one of whom was later arrested for fraud, allegedly assisted Abedi in the research and procurement of chemicals used to build the bomb. (9) Several members of the gang allegedly had combat experience in Libya's civil war, others had visited a convicted Libyan jihadi imprisoned in the United Kingdom prior to the attack, while Abedi's father had reported ties to senior Libyan jihadi figures. (10) Abedi and his brother also likely used a student loan and public benefits fraud to fund the attack. (11) At the official government inquest after the bombing, it was revealed that the security services had expressed concern with the "close proximity" of gangs and violent extremists in south Manchester and the difficulty distinguishing gang-related drug-dealing and fraud from that of national security interest. (12) Elsewhere, the perpetrators of the November 2015 Paris attacks leveraged a fraudulent document ring led by a criminal underworld figure to procure identity cards used to travel, wire funds, rent getaway vehicles, and acquire safehouses for preparing the attack. (13) In December 2020, a French court convicted 14 people for involvement in the January 2015 attacks in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo office and the Hypercacher kosher supermarket. At least seven of those 14 were also found guilty of being members of criminal networks in Lille, France, and Ardennes, Belgium, that procured firearms used in the attack or provided logistical or financial support to the perpetrators. (14)

Based on Europe's experience, the crime-terror nexus can be conceptualized as involving four components. First, those involved in terrorist activity often had a prior criminal record. Second, crime was utilized to finance or logistically support terrorism. Third, some of those involved in terrorist activity were involved with street gangs; and fourthly, some served time in prison--ten regarded as "melting pots" where criminal and terrorist networks converge-where relevant skills were acquired, members were radicalized, and relationships of utility for the future attack were developed. (15)

While the prevalence of criminal history and plot-relevant criminal activity in the U.S. Islamic State cases is indeed less pronounced than in Europe, a number of important trends and practical considerations are evident that inform the crime-terror nexus. This article updates a larger study by the author that assessed the interplay of crime and terrorism in U.S. Islamic State cases and ultimately illustrated how the U.S. experience acts as a counterpoint to Europe. (16) This article updates the original dataset, which examined the criminal past of every publicly identified individual charged in U.S. federal court for activity associated with the Islamic State up until June 1, 2020, by including two more years of cases. The updated dataset comprises 237 individuals, including all 227 federal Islamic State defendants and all 10 individuals killed by law enforcement while carrying out Islamic State-related attacks in the United States, from the first case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in March 2014 to June 1, 2022. (b) All data and defendant criminal records were ascertained from Justice Department documents, official court records, and open-source accounts. (c)

This article reviews developments in the crime-terror nexus, drawing from new and old Islamic State cases. It provides an updated examination of the criminal histories of U.S. Islamic State defendants, looks at the recurrence of repeat criminal offenders, and highlights the consistent prevalence of violent crimes, especially domestic violence and firearm offenses, among individuals in the dataset. It examines criminality that was integral to the financing or logistics of Islamic State activity in the United States and assesses the role of gangs and prison on defendants' pathways to terrorism. Moving beyond the Islamic State, it suggests that the crime-terror nexus appears more pronounced in other parts of the ideological spectrum, particularly for racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists (REMVEs) in the United States. While a systematic examination of right-wing extremist cases is beyond this article's scope, it intends to highlight avenues for future research so that scholars and practitioners may endeavor to better understand the relevance and wider salience of the crime-terror nexus in the United States. This article will now examine, in turn, the four components of the crime-terror nexus relating to U.S. Islamic State cases before discussing the crime-terror nexus in U.S. REMVE cases and providing some practical implications and conclusions.

Criminal History

In the wake of a terrorist incident, a dreaded realization for counterterrorism practitioners may be that the perpetrator was "known to law enforcement" due to the presence of a criminal record or prior interactions with police. It is conventional wisdom in law enforcement that while prior arrests do not directly predict a subject's risk, arrest records are a valuable tool and source of information for counterterrorism analysts and investigators that can shed light on prior violent behavior. (17) Criminologists have long regarded criminal history to be one of the best predictors of future criminal activity. (18) One of the few studies to explore the relationship between criminal history and involvement in terrorism (published in Criminology in 2018) found that those with a criminal record were more likely than those with no criminal record to engage in violent political extremism (terrorism), and ultimately concluded that a criminal history is a reliable predictor for future engagement in violent extremist behavior. (19)

In the United States, 31 percent of Islamic State defendants and perpetrators killed in an attack have a prior criminal record, defined as having at least one arrest by a law enforcement agency (73 of 237). This trend has remained relatively consistent as the number of Islamic State cases rose between March 2014 and June 2022 (though the rate of cases has slowed in recent years as the group has declined in Syria): In 2016, 28 percent of all Islamic State defendants had prior criminal histories; (20) in 2017, 26 percent; (21) and in 2020, 32 percent. (d) As of June 2022, more than half (53 percent) had no criminal history. The records of the remaining 16 percent could not be determined due to a lack of open-source data.

Many U.S. Islamic State defendants were repeat criminal offenders: 63 percent (38) of defendants with a criminal record (e) had more than one prior arrest, which means there is a likelihood of recurrent contact with law enforcement that provides additional data points for counterterrorism investigators attempting to gain an understanding of a subject of concern's propensity for violence. The average number of prior arrests per U.S. Islamic State defendant with a criminal record remains approximately three per defendant. A non-trivial percentage of U.S. Islamic State defendants appear to have a fairly lengthy criminal background, with 28 percent (17) of those with a criminal record having at least three arrests, which includes 10 defendants with more than six arrests and several with 11-14 arrests. (f)

Criminological studies that examined the prevalence of a...

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