BERLIN, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- A new generation of European converts to Islam is taking up terrorism and making it harder for intelligence agents to score prosecution successes.
"They are European men or women who have converted to Islam and become radicalized," Berndt Georg Thamm, a Berlin-based terrorism expert, told United Press International. "So far, they fight exclusively away from their home countries, they fight for example in Chechnya, but who knows how long it will stay that way?"
If they performed terrorist acts in their home countries, it would change the profile of a potential terrorist to even more frequently include individuals with Western European family backgrounds, widening the range of potential suspects.
While observers say officials need to do more to prevent recruitment, anti-terror authorities often lack necessary knowledge on the issue.
They fail to prevent the creation of future terrorists because "the factors that add to the radicalization and recruitment" of people in and outside Europe "are inadequately researched," Annegret Bendiek, EU and terrorism expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, wrote in a recent study on the European Union's anti-terror strategy.
