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AReporteratLargeJUNE 1, 2015 ISSUE

Journey to JihadWhy are teen-agers joining ISIS?

BY BEN TAUB

I

Jejoen Bontinck at his home in Antwerp, in December,2014. The Belgian authorities who interrogated himemerged with a portrait of the radical Islamistrecruitment process.PHOTOGRAPHS BY BEN TAUB

n 2009, a fourteen-year-old Belgian named JejoenBontinck slipped a sparkly white glove onto his

left hand, squeezed into a sequinned black cardigan,and appeared on the reality-television contest MoveLike Michael Jackson. He had travelled to Ghentfrom his home, in Antwerp, with his father, Dimitri, who wore a pin-striped suit jacketand oversized sunglasses, and who told the audience that he was Jejoens manager, mentalcoach, and personal assistant. Standing before the judges, Jejoen (pronounced yeh-yoon)professed his faith in the American Dream. Dance yourself dizzy, a judge said, andJejoen moonwalked through the preliminary round. That is performance! Dimitri toldthe shows host, a former Miss Belgium named Vronique de Kock. Youre gonna hearfrom him, sweetie.

Jejoen was soon eliminated, but four years later, when he least wanted the attention, hebecame the focus of hundreds of articles in the Belgian press. He had participated in ajihadi radicalization program, operated out of a rented room in Antwerp, that inspireddozens of Belgian youths to migrate to Syria and take up arms against the government ofBashar al-Assad. Most of the groups members ultimately became part of the IslamicState of Iraq and al-Sham, joining more than twenty thousand foreign fighters engagedin the conflict in Syria and Iraq. Today, ISIS controls large parts of both countries. Withrevenue of more than a million dollars a day, mostly from extortion and taxation, thegroup continues to expand its reach; in mid-May, its forces captured the Iraqi city ofRamadi, the capital of Anbar province, and, last week, they took control of Palmyra, inSyria.

About four thousand European jihadis have gone to Syria since the outbreak of war, in

IAbout four thousand European jihadis have gone to Syria since the outbreak of war, in2011, more than four hundred from Belgium. (It is estimated that at least a hundredAmericans have joined the fight.) The migration of youths from seemingly stable andprosperous communities to fight with radical Islamists has bewildered not only theirfamilies but governments and security forces throughout Europe.

Tens of thousands of Muslim civilians and moderate rebels, mostly Sunnis, died in theearly stages of the war in Syria, and many people have argued that the European jihadiswere motivated by humanitarian concerns. But thousands of pages of Belgian federal-police documentsincluding wiretaps and interrogations of jihadis who fought abroadand later returnedshow that, even before ISIS announced its presence in Syria, theprimary objective for many Europeans, including those in Jejoens group, was to establishan Islamic caliphate through violence. We were already talking about terrorism in 2012,a Belgian security official told me. But, at that time, no one wanted to talk aboutterrorism, because Assad insisted that the opposition was composed of extremists. TheBelgian security official said, It was very difficult to say, Well, yes, he is right, becauseour Belgians are terrorists.

After eight months in Syria, Jejoen returned to Belgium, where he was promptly arrested.Jejoens lawyer says that the authorities interrogated him for more than two hundredhours. They emerged with a portrait of the radical Islamist recruitment process, as well asan account of the workings of ISIS. We are sure that he probably didnt tell useverything, the Belgian security official said. But he added, of what Jejoen did divulge,We havent found one element that is not correct.

I met Jejoen several times last winter, usually at his mothers home, in Antwerp, where hewas awaiting sentencing in Belgiums largest terrorism trial. He mostly avoideddiscussing his experience in Syria, preferring to play Counter-Strike on a laptop. Buttranscripts of the police interrogations show that he was, as his father calls him, thegolden witness.

n 1994, Dimitri Bontinck, then a twenty-year-old night-club bouncer, travelled toWest Africa on holiday, where he met and married Rose, a Nigerian woman with

strict Catholic beliefs. Their son, Jejoen, was born in southern Nigeria the following year;the family moved to Belgium shortly afterward. Dimitri told me that he served in themilitary, and then in a U.N. peacekeeping mission to Bosnia, before taking anadministrative position in the Antwerp court system. When Jejoen was eight, theBontincks had a daughter, Iris. Family life was always in harmony, Dimitri said thiswinter, in his one-room apartment in Antwerp. Now forty-one, Dimitri has a buzz cutand an athletic build that belies his reliance on whiskey and Marlboros.

Jejoen was brought up Catholic, and enrolled in a prestigious Jesuit academy called Our

IJejoen was brought up Catholic, and enrolled in a prestigious Jesuit academy called OurLady College. I think that was the best period of his life, Dimitri said, praising theschools structure. But when Jejoen was fifteen he started doing poorly in math, and hadto transfer to a remedial high school. Then his girlfriend dumped him. At that point,Dimitri told me, Jejoen fell down in a black hole.

Jejoen described this period to the police as one of searching and looking for analternative to the pain. When he was sixteen, he started dating a Moroccan girl at hisnew school, who introduced him to Islam, and told him that if he wanted to keep seeingher he had to learn about the religion. Jejoen searched What is Islam? online, and, onAugust 1, 2011, the first day of Ramadan, he converted at De Koepel Mosque.

De Koepel, which means The Dome, was founded in Antwerp, in 2005, by Belgianconverts. At the time, no mosque in Belgium conducted Friday prayers in Dutch, soMuslims who didnt speak Arabic or Turkish had difficulty following sermons. DeKoepel became a home not only for converts but for hundreds of second- and third-generation Moroccans and Turks.

Do you have a moment to talk about toxic waste?

On Fridays, the ground floor of the mosque is linedwith four rows of men and boys at prayer. Womenpray upstairs, and watch the imam deliver his sermonby live video. At De Koepel, Jejoen prayed five timesa day and closely followed the sermons of SulaymanVan Ael, the imam at the time, who took a relativelymoderate tone, emphasizing charity work and thefive pillars of Islam.

Dimitri found the conversion frustrating. A family is supposed to eat together at thetable, he told me, but, when Jejoen adopted halal dietary restrictions, family dinnersgrew less frequent. Still, Dimitri saw Jejoens new habits as a kind of teen-age rebellion.What can you do? he said.

n November, 2011, three months after Jejoens conversion, a neighbor namedAzeddine invited him to visit the headquarters of Sharia4Belgium, at 117

Dambruggestraat. The mission of Sharia4Belgium, established the previous year, was totransform Belgium into a state governed as the cities of Raqqa, in Syria, and Mosul, inIraq, are today: replace the parliament with a shura council and the Prime Minister witha caliph; stone adulterers and execute homosexuals; and convert or banish all non-Muslims, or force them to pay jizya, a tax levied on those who dont adhere to the faith.

The leader of Sharia4Belgium was Fouad Belkacem, a thirty-three-year-old militantpreacher. A slight, bespectacled, balding man with a full dark beard, who usually wears along djellabah, Belkacem was born in Belgium to Moroccan parents. In his twenties, hewore jeans and was clean-shaven. He was arrested for burglary and forgery, for which hespent time in jail. After he got out, he worked as a used-car salesman and volunteered ata youth center, where, according to a social worker named Peter Calluy, he propagatedhomophobia and anti-democratic ideas.

Anjem Choudary, a British radical Islamist, told me that in March, 2010, Belkacemvisited him in London to ask his advice about how to start something in Belgium.Choudary, who is forty-eight, and has a long, graying beard, has acted as a spokesman forvarious radical groups, such as al-Muhajiroun and Islam4UK, that have since beenbanned under U.K. terrorism laws. He has been arrested on several occasions fororganizing illegal protests, and several of his associates have committed acts of terrorism,including, in 2013, the killing of Lee Rigby, a British soldier, on the streets of London.But Choudary, who is closely monitored by security services, has never been convicted ofany terrorism-related charges.

I went through the history of al-Muhajiroun, how we set it up, Choudary told me oneafternoon last winter, in a London caf. You cant do what the prophets of old did, whichwas to stand on the hills and the mountains and address people, he said. The hills andmountains today are Sky News, CNN, Fox News, the BBC. We were meeting just a fewhours after the murders of twelve people at the office of Charlie Hebdo, and Choudaryproudly showed me his statement on Twitter: Freedom of expression does not extend toinsulting the Prophets of Allah, whatever your views on the events in Paris today!#ParisShooting. He was delighted by the reaction. Thats not bad, actuallytwohundred and eighty-six retweets? he said. A few minutes later, Choudarys phone rang.Fox News, tonight, he said, smiling. Sean Hannity wanted Choudary to represent theMuslim view.

Choudary described Belkacem as an incredibly receptive younger brother. Belkacemreturned to Belgium and started Sharia4Belgium that March. By the time Jejoen arrived,in November, 2011, the group had publicly burned an American flag to commemoratethe attacks on the World Trade Center and, in a Facebook post, applauded the news thata young politician, who belonged to an extreme-right political party that denouncedMuslims and immigrants, was dying of cancer. Later, on YouTube, Belkacem declaredSharia4Belgiums intention to destroy city monuments, and members travelled to theNetherlands to disrupt a lecture delivered by two openly gay Muslims. Every weekend,the group held demonstrations in public squares in Antwerp and Brussels, as well as inthe small towns along the train line between them. Sharia4Belgium enjoyed theprotection of the same free-expression laws that the group sought to dismantle. It was alittle bit irritating, the Belgian security official told me, but its very clear that youre notgoing to demolish democracy in Belgium by giving flyers to people.

WBelkacem also established contact with jihadis in other countries. He had connectionswith people in Denmark and other parts of Europe, Choudary told me. One prominentjihadi ideologue in the Middle East, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, advised Belkacem tofocus on recruitment. The goal was to establish Sharia law not just in Belgium buteverywhere.

hen Jejoen first visited the headquarters of Sharia4Belgium, Belkacem askedhim if he was prepared to learn the Koran without any distortion or editing or

interpretation. He then sent Jejoen back to De Koepel with a set of questions for VanAel, the imam, including one about the validity of hatred in the name of Allah. Van Aelliterally told me that this was the ideology of Sharia4Belgium, Jejoen said, and that Ishould turn away from it. But Belkacem had quoted verses from the Koran and thehadith to convince Jejoen of his interpretation of Islam. Van Aels response only affirmedJejoens belief in Belkacems message.

Typical recruitment patterns in Europe and the West tell us that it helps if that persondoesnt have a religious background, Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist recruiter who nowruns a counter-extremism think tank in London called Quilliam, told me. Converts andthe newly devout, dislocated from the traditional hierarchies of Islam, are less likely tochallenge a purported authority on religious matters.

Jejoen adopted a Muslim name, Sayfullah Ahlu Sunna. He also took a kunya, a kind ofnickname that in the Arab world reflects familial relations and endearment but in jihadicircles is also used to obscure identity. Jejoens kunya was Abu Assya; Belkacems was AbuImran. In Sharia4Belgium, most members, who were known as brothers, addressed oneanother by their kunyas.

Ass kickers . . . Ass kickers . . .

Belkacem ran an intensive twenty-four-weekprogram of ideological training. He began bydeclaring that the world was divided into twogroups: Muslims and non-Muslims. In mainstreammosques, nuance and interpretive religiousscholarship are encouraged. Notes collected in policeraids show that Belkacems lessons reduced the worldto flowcharts and categories: Muslims versus infidels;Sharia versus democracy. Belkacem taught thebrothers that most imams ignore discussions of jihadand martyrdom because they want to keep statefunding. Bart Buytaert, the chairman of De Koepel, told me, Belkacem andSharia4Belgium accused us of being non-Muslims.

Jejoen began spending most of his free time at the headquarters of Sharia4Belgium. Oneof the brothers regularly led martial-arts classes there, which some memberssupplemented with kickboxing training at a nearby gym. Choudary, who is identified inpolice files as a financial supporter of Sharia4Belgium, lectured remotely, through avideo-chat Web site called Paltalk. Choudarys mentor, Omar Bakri Muhammad, aradical preacher who became known in London as the Tottenham Ayatollah, did thesame from Lebanon, where he lived after being exiled from the U.K. Choudary alsofostered an exchange program, through which Belkacems followers came to England tostudy with him, and some of his followers visited the Sharia4Belgium headquarters. Onone occasion, Choudary and a group of his followers travelled to the Netherlands, todeliver a lecture for the brothers of Sharia4Belgium and its partner organizationSharia4Holland about the methodology to overthrow the regimes. The visit wascaptured by a documentary crew from the Belgian channel RTBF. I come from Englandin order to radicalize the youth in this country, Choudary said. One Sharia4Belgiummember remarked to a British counterpart, Sometimes you need laptop, sometimes youneed Kalashnikov.

Members were discouraged from sharing information about the group with their parents.Choudary told me, Theres no need for them to be informed. When Jejoens parentsasked where he was spending so much time, he said that he was playing video gameswith friends. Jejoen routinely came home late and struggled to get up in the mornings.Step by step, he started to neglect his responsibilities, Dimitri said. Some of thebrothers dropped out of school. Many lost interest in friends who werent affiliated withSharia4Belgium. Choudary said that it was natural that members would distanceourselves from our previous life, and our previous friends and behavior.

Dimitri found out about his sons membership in Sharia4Belgium in late 2011, shortlyafter Jejoen joined the group. Then a brother named Michael Delefortriewho hadnamed his two sons for founding members of Al Qaedawas arrested for trying to sell aKalashnikov online. Belkacem held a press conference that was covered by an evening-news show. Dimitri was watching television at home that evening when he spottedJejoen next to Belkacem on the screen. Dimitri told the police that Jejoen was a minor,and asked them to extract him from the group, but he says that a judge told him thatthere was nothing they could do.

Then, one evening in February, 2012, the principal of Jejoens high school warned thepolice that Jejoen had threatened to purge the school. A juvenile court ordered Jejoen tosee a counsellor, but, according to Dimitri, she didnt know anything about Islam. Howyou can solve a problem if the other parts dont even know where is Mecca? he said.Dimitri started visiting the Sharia4Belgium headquarters, hoping to find evidence ofillegal activity. I always had a feeling that something is going wrong inside thatclubhouse, he told me. Dimitri and Rose invited Belkacem to their house, but he wasadept at deflecting their inquiries, and Dimitri never saw any extremist materials inside

Bthe headquarters. Though police raids later discovered fundamentalist literatureincluding a pamphlet with instructions on how to beat women with a corrective andeducational intentit was kept in members homes, not at the Sharia4Belgiumheadquarters.

As part of the indoctrination program, the brothers often watched archived lectures byAnwar al-Awlaki, the American-born imam who was killed in a U.S. drone strike inYemen a little more than a month before Jejoens first visit to Sharia4Belgium. They alsowatched footage of battles in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and other jihadi conflict zones, andcame to think of the mujahideen in the videos as selfless heroes defending Islam againstcorrupt crusaders. One day, they watched a video of a beheading. Members discussedwhere theyd like to fight in the future, from Libya to Somalia to the Seychelles. You sitfor months in a group in which jihad is considered quite normal, Jejoen said.

Jejoen continued to text girls, which was forbidden by Belkacem; one day, he ordered abrother to destroy Jejoens SIM card. Months later, Jejoen got in worse trouble forproselytizing on his own. Other Sharia4Belgium members said that Jejoen was using theactivity as an excuse to meet girls. Belkacem accused him of practicing exorcism. Hewas temporarily suspended from the group.

Belkacem dedicated the last four weeks of the course to teaching the importance ofloyalty toward Muslims, and disavowal of non-Muslims. The prospect ofexcommunication kept most members obedient; one brother, who was in his late teens,was required to undergo circumcision. The programs final task was a written exam. Thequestions were rudimentary, including What does Islam mean? and Should I vote?(Members were discouraged from voting, on the ground that it acknowledged thelegitimacy of the democratic process.) One student, whose exam was found in the policeraid, scored eighty-four per cent. Today, he is believed to be a member of the religiouspolice in Raqqa.

y February, 2012, Belgian police were wiretapping phone calls within the group.But many of the trainees were petty criminals familiar with police tactics, and a

former Belgian counterterrorism investigator told me, They know the way. They buy acheap cell phone, and they throw it away.

Belkacem never explicitly instructed his followers to fight in Syria. But he taught themthat martyrdom on the battlefield, which he called pure Islam, yielded the greatestreward in paradise. The battle is not only an invitation, but an individual obligation,Walid Lakdim, a Sharia4Belgium member, said in a police interrogation after returningfrom Syria.

At the time, the Syrian revolution was not known forits foreign jihadi element. The face of the rebel sidewas the Free Syrian Army, a loose affiliation ofgroups, some of which were led by officers who haddefected from Assads government forces afterrefusing to shoot unarmed protesters. The rebelsspoke of the eventual triumph of democracy overAssads brutal regime.

In 2011, a Sharia4Belgium member named NabilKasmi travelled to Lebanon, where he visitedChoudarys mentor, Omar Bakri Muhammad, whowas living under house arrest in Tripoli, a coastal cityin the north. Kasmi returned to Belgium a few months later, but, in March, 2012, hecame back to Lebanon. At the same time, other Sharia4Belgium members travelled toYemen, where they were detained and subsequently deported, under suspicion of tryingto join Al Qaeda. Then, in May, Kasmi crossed into Syria. Jejoen told police that Kasmicalled Sharia4Belgium headquarters, declaring that he was in Syria to fight. Accordingto a Lebanese military court, Bakri Muhammad and Kasmi helped a few Europeanjihadis establish themselves in Al Qaeda-affiliated groups across the Syrian border. Oncethey were ready to go to Syria, the Belgian security official said, they had a wholeoperational network, owing to Sharia4Belgiums ties to Bakri Muhammad andChoudary. (Choudary denied sending people to Syria, and said, If I were to sendsomeone somewhere, I would go there first.)

The following month, Belkacem was arrested and imprisoned for instigating hate. Oneof his wives, Stephanie Djato, had refused to comply with a Belgian law that bans full-face coverings in public. (Though polygamy is illegal in Belgium, Belkacem has marriedat least two women in religious ceremonies.) When a female police officer tried toremove her niqab, Djato head-butted her, breaking the officers nose. Belkacem andChoudary both posted statements online, threatening retribution against the police forremoving Djatos niqab. Riots ensued in Brussels, and two police officers were stabbed bya man carrying Sharia4-Belgium literature.

With Belkacem in jail, Sharia4Belgium was rudderless. The members continued theirvideo sessions with Choudary, who invited them to protest the Olympics, which wereheld in London that July. Kasmi returned to Belgium for a short period. Then, on August20, 2012, he left for Syria again; the next day, five other members followed. In September,Jejoen and several other Sharia4Belgium members participated in demonstrations againstInnocence of Muslims, a film that depicted the prophet Muhammad as a homosexualand a child-molester and which sparked deadly protests across the Middle East andNorth Africa. By October, the group had dissolved, and in the next eighteen monthsabout fifty Belgians directly affiliated with Sharia4Belgium made their way to Syria.

IThose who arrived first joined groups that were later absorbed into Al Qaeda and ISIS;the others mostly joined ISIS directly. Only Belkacem stayed behind. In a long openletter, written from jail, Belkacem insisted that he was only a provocateur, comparinghimself to Pussy Riot and Femen.

n February, 2013, shortly after Jejoens eighteenth birthday, he woke up from a dreamin which Azeddine, the friend who had introduced him to Sharia4Belgium, was

praying for help. They hadnt seen each other in five months. A few days later, Jejoensphone rang, and a number appeared beginning with 963, the Syrian country code. It wasAzeddine. Jejoen asked him who else was in Syria. Everyone, he replied.

On the pretext of going to Amsterdam with friends, Jejoen borrowed his fathers suitcaseand packed it with a sleeping bag, warm clothes, a flashlight, andon Azeddines requestnight-vision goggles. Another Sharia4Belgium member, already in Syria, told Jejoenhow to get to the border between Turkey and Syria. Jejoen left home on February 21,2013, without knowing the name of the group that he would join. He expected that hewould fall martyr within a short time and would go to paradise, he said. He believed, ashe had been told, that good deeds erase bad deeds, and jihad is the best deed of all.

At Schiphol Airport, in Amsterdam, Jejoen dawdled so long at a Burger King that hemissed his flight to Istanbul. He had forgotten his passport, too, but his Belgian identitycard sufficed. He had been instructed to meet two other aspiring jihadis in Istanbul, buthe ended up at the wrong airport. So he continued alone, flying to Adana, in southernTurkey, where they all finally met in a caf. Together, they took a bus to Antakya, a citynear the Syrian border.

A smuggler met them there and drove them to a village in the mountains, where theywaited with other jihadis for the signal to cross. Once in Syria, Jejoen and hiscompanions texted other Sharia4Belgium members and asked to be picked up. Bynightfall on February 22nd, Jejoen was in a car, reunited with his friends from Belgium.I found it strange to see them with weapons, he told police. I hesitated and then askedif this was what I had come for. Soon, the car pulled up to a walled villa in Kafr Hamra,a small town on the outskirts of Aleppo. Around seventy pairs of shoes, belonging toBelgian, Dutch, and French jihadis, were arrayed on racks outside the front door. Inside,Jejoen met Amr al-Absi, the Syrian emir in charge of the Mujahideen Shura Council, agroup of international jihadis whose goal was to transform the northern part of thecountry into an Islamic state. Absi had been severely injured in battle, and had severalbroken ribs and a large open wound on his left leg.

Dimitri Bontinck found a YouTube video showing several Belgian jihadis in a f ield withyellow flowers. One of them looked like Jejoen.

Absis family is from Aleppo, but he was born inSaudi Arabia, probably in 1979. His olderbrother, a dentist named Firas, trained with AlQaeda in Afghanistan. Amr and Firas are thought tohave joined Al Qaeda in Iraq, which became theIslamic State of Iraq; the groups aim was to establishan Islamic caliphate that would spread throughoutthe Middle East and beyond. In 2007, Amr al-Absiwas arrested in Syria, and held in the Al Qaeda wing of Sednaya prison, with hundredsof other extremists. Four years later, in June, 2011, Assad released them. It was a turningpoint in the Syrian war. Assad had stated that the opposition was full of terrorists, aclaim that the mysterious amnesty then fulfilled. It seemed like a calculated move topoison the nascent Syrian revolution.

Absi took up the leadership of a jihadi brigade near the Syrian city of Homs. His brotherFiras had recently founded a group called the Shura Council of the Islamic State, whichgained notoriety after raising the Al Qaeda flag at the border gates near Bab al-Hawa, amajor crossing point between Turkey and Syria, in July, 2012. It was the first mention ofan Islamic state in the Syrian civil war. The following week, the group kidnapped twoEuropean journalists, Jeroen Oerlemans and John Cantlie. Moderate Syrian rebelsrescued and released the journalists a week later. Firass extremism was a liability to therevolution, and in September, 2012, he was kidnapped and murdered by moderate rebels.Amr al-Absi inherited his brothers role as emir, and the group changed its name to theMujahideen Shura Council.

In Kafr Hamra, Absi divided his fighters according to origin. Most of the Europeans,including the Sharia4Belgium members, lived in a walled villa, with an indoor swimmingpool and a fountain. The Arabs, and some luckier Europeans, lived in a nearby complex,known as the palace, which was said to have been captured from an official in the Assadregime. It had a fuelling station, an orchard the size of a football field, and a rooftop pool.

Absi designated Houssien Elouassaki, a twenty-one-year-old Sharia4Belgium member,as the leader of the European group. When Absi wasnt present, Elouassaki decidedmatters ranging from who washed the dishes to which Europeans would be allowed tojoin them in Syria. It is something incredible, his brother Abdel, who remained inBelgium, told a friend over the phone. He is the youngest emir in the world.

Absis fighters didnt know his real name. They called him Sheikh, or Emir, or by hiskunya, Abu Asir. Jejoen told police that the Belgians mostly knew him as the bigfinancier of everything. Absi bought the weapons, the fuel, and the food, and whenfighters were injured in battle he covered their medical expenses.

In early December, 2012, the Mujahideen Shura Council assisted Jabhat al-Nusra, the

In early December, 2012, the Mujahideen Shura Council assisted Jabhat al-Nusra, thejihadi group that five months later became Al Qaedas official Syrian affiliate, in an attackon an Army outpost called Base 111, near the village of Sheikh Suleiman. It was Assadslast major base west of Aleppo, and soon the Al Qaeda flag flew overhead. Absis grouptook prisoners, and initially, a jihadi said in a wiretapped call, they planned to use themfor ransom or prisoner exchanges. Instead, Everyone cut someones throat, HoussienElouassaki told his brother Abdel over the phone. Afterward, the Army base, whichstretched over five hundred acres, became a jihadi training camp. Jabhat al-Nusracontrolled the checkpoint to the camp, but Absis group trained on its own.

Training lasted twenty days. Each morning began with a ninety-minute run led by aformer Egyptian special-forces officer, followed by two hours of tactical lessons withunloaded weapons and simulated attacks, a short break for lunch and prayers, andlectures by Islamist scholars. Lessons were given in Arabic and translated by bilingualjihadis into Dutch. In the evenings, the Europeans took turns on sentry duty.

By late December, the Europeans of the Mujahideen Shura Council were setting uproadblocks on the main road through Kafr Hamra and stopping buses. They rifledthrough passengers belongings, hoping to identify Shia, Christian, Alawite, and Kurdishcivilians by small signs: a necklace with a cross, a garment that signified a particulartradition, a picture of Irans ayatollah stored on a mobile phone.

Hakim Elouassaki, one of Houssiens older brothers, joined him in Syria. He explainedthe routine in phone calls to his girlfriend in Belgium, captured by a wiretap. We takeevery unbeliever . . . and we take his money and everything from him, he said. I can takemoney, as much as I want . . . but it must be in the path of Allah. Only the Sunnis werespared. Hakim stole a gold ring from a Kurd and a laptop from a Christian. Hisgirlfriend later recounted to a friend that, when she offered to send Hakim an iPhonefrom Belgium, he told her not to bother, because he was waiting to steal it from aninfidel.

At the roadblocks, the Belgians held Syrian civilians for ransom. Normally it is seventythousand euros, Hakim told his girlfriend. If they do not pay, then we kill them. Butprices varied according to the victims sect. Hakim released an Armenian Christian afterhis family paid thirty thousand euros, but, when the brother of a captured Shiite civiliandelivered the same amount of money, Hakim killed him. That evening, Hakim called hisgirlfriend. As I shot him, he put up his hand, he said, so the bullet went through hishand and his head. Yet Hakim felt unfulfilled. I wish the filming worked when I killedhim, he said. I placed the camera badly, and it filmed nothing. (Hakim has sincedenied killing anyone in Syria.) The Europeans filmed other murders, though, includingthe beheading of an old man. In the video, one jihadi saws at his neck with a knife, whileanother hacks at the same wound with a rusty machete, to the excitement of the others.

JA

ejoen told Belgian police that as soon as he arrived in Syria he wished he couldleave. He said that he was sickened by the violence, and that he tried to get out of

the mandatory training. One day, he went to a hospital for a sinus infection, and askedthe doctor to write an extra prescription for antidepressants.

Nice guy, but I wish hed lose the muttonchops.

On his third day at the training camp, Jejoenreceived a black headband with Mujahideen ShuraCouncil printed in white Arabic letters. It was thefirst time he learned the name of his affiliation.Beyond these headbands, the group had no uniform.Shortly after dawn prayers one day, Jejoen asked oneof the camp leaders if he could return to Belgium. He cited a medical issue. The jihadiexpressed surprise, but said that he would not stand in the way. Houssien Elouassaki, theBelgian emir and Absis deputy, was less sympathetic. He demanded Jejoens mobilephone and identity card. Jejoen handed over his card, but claimed that he didnt have hisphone on him.

After dawn prayers on Tuesday, March 5th, Jejoens eleventh day in Syria, he ate breakfastwith his friend Azeddine and Houssien Elouassaki. When the meal was over, they seizedhim, bound his hands, and marched him up a steep trail to a bunker, which had beenconverted into a prison. Jejoen was chained in the cell without being told what he haddone. About two weeks later, Elouassaki came in and interrogated him. He referred to atext message on Jejoens phone, but wouldnt explain what it said. After another couple ofweeks, more members of Sharia4Belgium came into the bunker and told Jejoen thatDimitri had shown up at their villa. They asked how he knew of the location.

fter Jejoen left for Syria, Dimitri began trawling the Internet for clues to hiswhereabouts. He had learned that other Sharia4Belgium members were in Syria,

and thought that Jejoen must be among them. I was sending more than a thousandmessages, Dimitri told me. Never reply on his phone. One day, Dimitri found aYouTube video showing several Belgian jihadis in a field with yellow flowers. One ofthem looked like Jejoen. When I saw that, I couldnt continue my life here, Dimitri toldme. He decided to go to Syria to find his son.

Dimitri announced his intention in the Belgian press, and two journalists, Joanie de Rijkeand Narciso Contreras, offered to help him, in exchange for the story. Both had coveredthe region, and had connections in rebel-held parts of Syria. Dimitri met them in Turkey,and they crossed into Syria in early April, staying with pro-revolution activists in Aleppo.

On a moonless night a week later, they drove to Absis villa. Dimitri was exhausted and

DOn a moonless night a week later, they drove to Absis villa. Dimitri was exhausted andsunburned, and his clothes reeked of sweat. Armed jihadis told the journalists to stay inthe car but allowed Dimitri to come inside, along with two Syrian activists. Dimitriremoved his shoes by the entrance to the villa. Inside, dozens of Jejoens comrades andcaptors, most of them wearing balaclavas and scarves, sat on couches and on the floor ofthe living room. Some were holding AK-47s, though the room was supposed to bereserved for surfing the Internet or playing video games on a flat-screen television thatwas mounted on the wall.

Absi, a skeletal man in his early thirties, was not wearing a balaclava, and he had long,thick black hair and an even thicker beard. Sitting on a couch, his wounded leg proppedup, he beckoned Dimitri over and said, in English, that there were no Belgians in hisranks. But, when Dimitri stood to leave, Absi snapped his fingers and several jihadisyanked a black hood over his head, cuffed his hands, stripped him naked, beat him, andstuck the barrel of a Kalashnikov in his mouth. Who gave Dimitri the location? theyasked. Did Jejoen leak secrets about the training camp to his father? The jihadisinterrogated Dimitri in English, and took his passport and his phone, saying that theywould kill him if they found any mention of the police. Then they forced him to mimicthe sounds and movements of chickens, horses, and goats. A bright light shone throughthe black hood, and Dimitri assumed that the militants were filming the interrogation.He had seen hostage videos before, and feared that hed be blackmailed or killed.

Finally, the militants removed the hood, gave him some tea, and, after furtherquestioning, returned his passport and told him to leave. Dimitri climbed into the car. Inhis absence, the Syrian driver and one of the journalists had been beaten and threatenedwith execution. Shaken, after a few days they returned to Kilis, a Turkish town on theSyrian border. Weeks later, Dimitri went back to Aleppo, but again failed to find Jejoen.

Dimitri soon left for Belgium, where he began a campaign to bring attention to his sonscase in the media. Eventually, he released a video in which he fired guns and exchangedcalls of Allahu akbar with Syrian rebels. He told me that his outlandish behavior wasdesigned to court publicity for Jejoen, in the hope of bringing him home, but his anticssuggested someone out of his depth. With a ghostwriter, he produced a book calledJihadi Against His Will, which featured a photograph of a shirtless Jejoen on the cover.Dimitri acquired a reputation for eccentricity and lurid exaggeration; later, he fabricated astory that Jejoens girlfriend had given birth to triplets, in Belgium, and even inventednames for the imaginary children.

imitris visit convinced the Belgian jihadis that Jejoen was a spy. A week later, Amral-Absi, still on crutches, hobbled up the rocky hill to Jejoens cell to ask if he had

sought help from Israel. I told him that this was one big mistake, Jejoen said. His fatherhad sent a text message mentioning Israeli contacts, and Elouassaki had found it whilelooking through Jejoens phone.

IA few days later, Jejoen was released, on the condition that he complete his training andfully commit to the group. When another Belgian jihadi told Jejoen that he washomesick, and asked for his help in escaping, Jejoen agreed, and said that hed go withhim. But it was a setup. As they were sneaking out of the camp, a BMW with Belgianplates pulled up. Jejoen was taken at gunpoint and driven to another building on thecompound, where Absi stood, loading a pistol. Jejoen was forced to kneel at his feet.Then Absi aimed at his head and pulled the trigger. I closed my eyes and heard a bang,Jejoen told police.

No thank you, I already have a moat.SEPTEMBER 25, 2000

Absi had loaded the gun with blanks. He laughed,and asked Jejoen if he had died. I said nothing,Jejoen told police. He felt my neck and told me thatI had soft skin. Then someone reached for amachete on the wall. I thought I was going to bebeheaded, because that is the judgment of the spies,Jejoen said. Instead, the jihadis tortured him for fourdays, gagging him and then whipping him with electrical cables until he could no longerwalk.

n 2010, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a militant jihadist from Samarra and a formerprisoner of the U.S., was named the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq. In the next few

years, the I.S.I. captured large portions of northern and western Iraq, near the Syrianborder. According to the journalist Rania Abouzeid, writing in Politico, Baghdadi sentemissaries to Syria in 2011 to capitalize on the chaos of the revolution and prepare toestablish an Islamic state there.

Baghdadi was supposed to take orders from Al Qaedas leadership. But, on April 8, 2013,he announced that the I.S.I. had added Syria to its mandate, creating ISIS, and thatSyrias jihadis were obliged to consolidate under his leadership. This set up a powerstruggle. Jabhat al-Nusra insisted on remaining loyal to Al Qaeda. Absi, whosemembership in the I.S.I. had caused his imprisonment in Sednaya, guided theMujahideen Shura Council directly into Baghdadis control. (Only a few defectors joinedal-Nusra. One was the Belgian emir, Houssien Elouassaki. Within weeks, he wasmurdered by his former allies.)

An anonymous Twitter account called Wikibaghdady, with apparent inside knowledge ofISISs leadership, has asserted that Absis group was the first branch for Baghdadi inSyria. Absi and Baghdadi discussed ways to depict other rebel groups as puppets ofintelligence agencies, Wikibaghdady wrote. Soon, fighters in other jihadi brigades began

to defect to ISIS in large numbers. Richard Barrett, a former director of Global CounterTerrorism Operations for the British Secret Intelligence Service and a senior vice-president of the Soufan Group, a security company that tracks Islamic extremism, toldme, My impression is that, were it not for the Absis, you wouldnt have got that suddenflow of foreigners away from al-Nusra into the Islamic State. Absis loyalty proved tomany that it wasnt Al Qaedas show; it was Baghdadis show. In return, Baghdadi madeAbsi the Wali of Aleppo, overseeing all Islamic State operations within the province.From then on, abduction on the road to Aleppo became a greater risk for Westernjournalists and aid workers than living under bombardment in the embattled city.

Isolated in his cell, Jejoen didnt know that ISIS existed until at least seven weeks afterthe rest of the world did, even though he was now its prisoner. In August, he wastransported to an ISIS prison in the basement of Aleppos childrens hospital, where somecaptives were chained to radiators. Many were tortured, and sometimes Jejoen heardgunshots. He told police that the Mujahideen Shura Council usually beheaded prisoners,but the Islamic State used bullets. After a few days, Jejoens captors moved him to a cellwith three emaciated Western prisoners. Two of them, the journalists James Foley andJohn Cantlie, had been captured nearly a year before. (Cantlie was reportedly abductedwhile working on a film about his first kidnapping.) The third was a German hostagenamed Toni Neukirch.

Foley and Cantlie had been kidnapped together, in November, 2012, after leaving anInternet caf near Aleppo to drive back to Turkey. They told Jejoen that their captorsbelonged to Jabhat al-Nusra, but they were moved to different locations, and eventuallyfell into Absis hands.

For three weeks, Jejoen, Foley, and Cantlie played word-association games like Animal,Vegetable, Mineral to pass the time. Foley and Cantlie had undergone torture, includingwaterboarding, and Cantlies ankles were scarred from the chains. Foley and Cantlie hadconverted to Islam while in captivity, so the group prayed together, and discussed theirfaith.

One day in mid-September, the emir of the prison, a Dutch jihadi, said that Jejoen couldleave if he returned to a training camp or performed lookout duty near the Sheikh Najjarindustrial complex, in Aleppo, a site of intense fighting. He chose the latter. The jihaditold Jejoen that Foley and Cantlie would soon be sent to a training camp.

Jejoen had been in prison more than six months. The captors who had tortured him overthe Israel text message had moved on to other locations, and nobody seemed to care howhe passed his time. He spent the next several days testing the limits of his freedom,leaving his post for hours at a time. Sometimes, he said, he went to Internet cafs to see

how long it would take for anyone to notice. He also briefly fought in a battle north ofAleppo; the European fighters called the front line there the gates of heaven. Jejoenslawyer admitted that he fired a grenade, but said that he did it out of boredom.

On October 7th, Jejoen sent a message to his father: Maybe I will leave now.

To where? Dimitri wrote back.

Turkey.

Having been a captive for most of his time in Syria, Jejoen knew nothing of the countrysgeography, so Dimitri helped plan his route. I have studied all topographic maps,Dimitri wrote Jejoen. I know it by heart! Because of fighting between moderate rebelsand ISIS forces near the closest border crossing into Turkey, Jejoens best way out was alonger route, through ISIS territory west of Aleppo. They decided that Jejoen should takea bus to a Syrian hospital near the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, where his father hadestablished contacts. Dimitri travelled to Reyhanli, a dusty town on the Turkish side ofthe crossing, and gave his contacts three hundred dollars and Jejoens passport. The nextday, they smuggled Jejoen across the border, dropping him at Dimitris hotel.

SEPTEMBER 28, 1998

Dimitri and Jejoen took a bus to Antakya, whereDimitri bought his son a silver ring with an onyxstone, which he wears every day. They flew toAmsterdam, and Dimitri rented a bungalow at aDutch campsite, where they enjoyed a brief vacation.Jejoen told his father that he had hoped to ridehorses in Syria, so Dimitri arranged for them to ride together in the countryside. After afew days, they returned to Antwerp.

In early 2014, ISIS transported Foley, Cantlie, and its other Western hostages to Raqqa,abandoning prisons that were filled with Syrian captives. When another faction of rebelsopened the prisons, they encountered only corpses. Wikibaghdady wrote that Amr al-Absi had issued an order to leave no one alive in the prisons.

Last fall, Absi was inducted into the Islamic State Shura Council, a group of adviserswho answer directly to Baghdadi. Richard Barrett, the former spy chief, told me thatAbsis role on the council was to oversee ISISs media strategy. In August, Foley wasexecuted by ISIS. The video showing his beheading was broadcast throughout the world.Cantlie is now the only publicly acknowledged Western hostage still held by the IslamicState. Since the fall, he has appeared in Islamic State propaganda, recently serving as a

DT

narrator of videos from cities under Islamic State control. While filming an episode inMosul, Cantlie spotted a drone overhead. Trying to rescue me again? he shouted at thesky. Do something! (Absi, according to a U.S. official, was killed in an air strike lastNovember.)

esperate to bring Jejoen back to Belgium, Dimitri had assured him that hewouldnt go to prison, but on October 18, 2013, hours after they arrived in

Antwerp, Belgian police arrested Jejoen at his mothers apartment. (While he was inSyria, Dimitri and Rose had divorced.) The forensic medical examiner at AntwerpUniversity Hospital noted dozens of scars on his back, abdomen, wrists, and the tops ofhis feet. After initial questioning, Jejoen was interrogated by officials from the securityforces of several countries, including the U.S. and the U.K. His descriptions of Foleystattoos and Cantlies family history were the first indications since the hostages haddisappeared that they were still alive.

Jejoens testimony to the police contributed to the prosecutors case against forty-sixmembers of Sharia4Belgium, including himself. The group was collectively prosecuted asa terrorist organization; members were individually charged with numerous other crimes,ranging from threatening to kill Belgian politicians to abducting and torturing Jejoen.Jejoen was charged with being a member of ISIS for the number of days that he had notspent as its prisoner, and for being a member of Sharia4Belgium before that. Only eightof the forty-six Sharia4Belgium members appeared in court. The rest are in Syriamoststill fighting, and some already dead.

The trial began last September, almost a year after Jejoens return, in Antwerps Palace ofJustice, a glass-and-steel complex. Armed security forces lined the perimeter of thecourtroom, monitoring the visitors gallery. On December 10th, the last day of hearings,two police officers brought Belkacemdressed in an olive jumpsuit, handcuffed, andrestrained with a thick beltinto the courtroom.

Twenty minutes into the proceedings, the magistrate invited Belkacem to make his plea.He spoke so quietly that people in the courtroom stood up and leaned toward him,straining to hear. I am a Muslim, not a terrorist, he said.

Liar! Ozana Rodrigues, the mother of Brian De Mulder, who is now fighting in Raqqa,shouted. Belkacem calmly asked whether it was a crime to promote your faith.

he verdict and the sentencing for Belkacem, Jejoen, and the others were set forJanuary 14, 2015. I visited Antwerp for six weeks this winter, while the judges were

deliberating. My life is totally destroyed, Dimitri told me. He hasnt held a job in twoyears. When we arranged our first meeting, he asked me to bring either red wine orwhiskey. As his ex-wife remarked, He doesnt drink water anymore.

In 2014, against the advice of his lawyers and the Belgian government, Dimitri started

OIn 2014, against the advice of his lawyers and the Belgian government, Dimitri startedtaking other parents of jihadis to Syria, for a small fee, to search for their children. Lastsummer, when I met him in Kilis, he was guiding two Belgian fathers into Islamic Stateterritory. One of them, Pol Van Hessche, later told me that he had taken a car intonorthern Syria and stopped at the front gate of a jihadi villa near Manbij. It was aholding place for young fighters waiting to go to an Islamic State training camp. His son,Lucas, came out of the building, and Pol pleaded with him to come home. Lucas refused.

Other parents of jihadis told me that Dimitri offered the only hope that one day theymight reunite with their children. One evening, in Antwerp, Dimitri assured OzanaRodrigues that he could guide her into Raqqa to find her son, who had recently fathereda child with a Dutch jihadi bride. But later, drinking whiskey in his apartment, heinsisted that he was finished with Syria. I cannot continue my life like this, he said.Then the phone rang, and after he hung up he announced that he had a new mission:You think Im going to say no when a mother is crying in my face? He continued, Iwake up with Syria, and I go to sleep with Syria.

Dimitris efforts to gain publicity for his son, and for parents facing a similar situation tohis own, have been perhaps too successful. He has taken to speaking in sound bites,calling himself Mother Teresa, for his attempts to help parents of other jihadis, anddescribing Jejoen as being just like Edward Snowden, for leaking jihadi secrets. Outsidethe courtroom, Dimitri shouted at TV cameras, in English, Bin Laden is laughing fromhell, Belkacem is laughing from the cell. This month, Dimitri received an eight-monthprison sentence for a 2013 incident in which he hit a former girlfriend, the daughter of ajudge, and held her hostage in a hotel room. (He has since appealed.) After thejudgment, he compared his plight to that of Nelson Mandela.

I need to leave you and the children and go to Tahiti ifIm ever going to be a truly great accountant.

FEBRUARY 6, 2012

n New Years Eve, two weeks before thesentencing, Jejoen and I ate at his favorite

Chinese restaurant in Antwerp. He had grown outhis hair and his beard since returning to Belgium. Aswe shared a large bony fish, Jejoen told me that hestill believes in the caliphate, and sees it assomething which you cant stop or hold back. It irks him that his father believes he isno longer radical, though he attributes this, in part, to his own minor deceptions. WhenDimitri is around, Jejoen wears trousers, but when he doesnt see it he wears a qamis, atraditional Muslim garment.

I asked Jejoen about the execution of James Foley, and he said that it was a question forscholars of Islam, adding, I cant say anything about it, because Im not at that level. Hetold me that there is no difference between his views and those of his spiritual leader,Belkacem. With the prospect of prison looming, Jejoen seemed to have recast in his mindhis experience in Syria. He declared that his only regret about his time there was that hereturned to Belgium. Living in Raqqa, he said, might be cool. He had been home formore than a year, and was frequently recognized and harassed on the streets of Antwerp.In recent months, Jejoen had sat in court next to other Sharia4Belgium defendants, someof whom had repeatedly lied to the authorities; his coperation seemed to have carriedno benefit. He hadnt been offered a plea deal or witness protection, because, the Belgiansecurity official said, thats just the system in Belgium.

Although he had divulged jihadi secrets in his police interrogations, Jejoen believed thathe could return to Syria unscathed. People think I cant go there, because Ill get killed,he told me. But he compared his coperation with the authoritieswhich otherSharia4Belgium members liken to treasonto committing a minor sin, such as drinkingalcohol while in Belgium. You cannot be punished for that in the caliphate, he said,because it didnt take place there.

We left the restaurant, and Jejoen headed back to his mothers apartment. A few nightslater, he called me from an unfamiliar phone number and asked for urgent help. Iwould like to go to Turkey, he said. He told me that it would be just for a holiday in aseaside resort in Antalyawhere the temperature was barely above freezing. He faced norestrictions on his travel, and said he would return to Antwerp for the sentencing. Heplanned to travel with his girlfriend, a Belgian of Algerian descent, whom his fatherdescribed as extremist. He asked to use my credit card, and promised to give me eighthundred euros immediately. The flight left in nine hours. I said no.

Later that night, Dimitri stood in the freezing alley outside his front door, smoking acigarette. One of my Syrian connections said that my son called to them, three weeksago, he told me. Jejoen later denied it, telling his father, If I want to go back in, I knowhow to go. Dimitri believed that if Jejoen went to Syria the Islamic State would kill him.You will see him in a video, he said. Nonetheless, Dimitri gave his son the money forthe trip to Antalya.

Before sunrise the next day, Jejoen was arrested at Brussels Airport. His journey violateda restraining order filed by his girlfriend, after a fight nearly two months before. (Theyhad since resolved their issues and she had asked for the order to be cancelled.) Heremained in prison until the sentencing, which was delayed a month, after the CharlieHebdo murders.

On February 11th, the court concluded that Sharia4Belgium was a terrorist organization.Jejoen was given a forty-month suspended sentence.

Belkacem received twelve years in prison. (He has since appealed his sentence.) Do youknow how much potential there is in prison? Belkacem once joked with his followers atthe Sharia4-Belgium headquarters. Everyone in prison is against the system, he said.Infidels and Muslims alike. There is work to be done. It will be awesome.

Ben Taub is a 2015 graduate of Columbias Journalism School.

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