The Grenoble Terror Attack.

On Friday (26/6/15) several terror attacks took place in France, Kuwait and Tunisia. Despite it being the least successful of the attacks in terms of loss of life I initially gave a lot of coverage to the attack that occurred in Grenoble, France. The main reason for this is that at the time of writing the attacks in Kuwait and Tunisia hadn't happened. However even if I'd known then what I know now I still think that I would have treated the Grenoble attack differently because it is markedly different from the other two attacks.

The attacks in Kuwait and Tunisia are what I would term closely held plots by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). That is to say that someone high up in the ISIL leadership contacted supporters/recruiters in both Kuwait and Tunisia instructing them to identify a target, recruit someone to carry out an attack and provide them with the logistical support - weapons, transport etc - to carry out that attack on a specific day. By contrast the attack in France was more of a franchise attack with a lone-wolf being radicalised over the Internet and then themselves identifying a target to attack. So rather then providing a breakdown of ISIL's wider networks and strategic objectives analysing the Grenoble attack is more a case of drawing up a sort of psychological profile of the attacker.

The alleged attacker in this case is Yassin Sali a 35 year old Muslim man who was born in France but is of North African extraction. He was investigated in 2006 for having radical views but now further action was taken. This is because despite what ISIL might claim western nations such as France do not prosecute people simply for being Muslim. In fact if you look at websites like "Stormfront" and books such as "The Paedophiles Guide to Love and Pleasure" we not only allow people to hold but also express a whole range of views and opinions that most of us find utterly vile and offensive. We normally only intervene to stop them either when they have harmed or are about to harm other people.

At the risk of getting into semantic word games I would say that Sali's interest in Islam's more extreme fringe made him an ISIL sympathiser rather then an ISIL supporter. However his interest was enough to follow what the group was up to through some of it's 90,000 weekly Internet postings. This would have made him aware of ISIL's official spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani's Ramadan message of June 23rd (23/6/15) which spoke of Muslims being 10 times closer to God during this holy month and urged them to carry out Jihadist attacks in that time because they would be rewarded 10 times as greatly. 

It would also have allowed him to become Internet friends with ISIL fighters in Iraq and Syria in much the same way that I am Internet friends with people like Rihanna and Kim Kardashian. Although none of these loose associations may have directly helped Sali plot his alleged attack the peer pressure would certainly have caused him to question why he wasn't doing more to live up to their example.

At around the same time Sali appears to have been going through some sort of personal crisis. For example a week before it is claimed that he had some big argument with his boss who ended up being killed in the attack. Sali is also have said to have had a massive argument with his wife in the days prior to the attack. These are the sort of personal stresses that cause many other people to commit acts of domestic violence, attempt suicide or engage in other sorts of self-destructive behaviour such as drinking too much and getting into fights.

Added to this there was the mass shooting at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, US on June 19th (19/6/15). This prompted a widespread discussion about what is and what isn't considered an act of terrorism because many in the US Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement demanded that it should be considered a terrorist attack while others argued that it could be legally justified because BLM have themselves engaged in what could be considered terrorist activity. 

The UK's main contribution to this discussion was an arson attack against a house in Langley Mill, Derbyshire on June 21st (21/6/15) in which three people were killed. Although I've not followed up on the story the initial claim was that a car had been set on fire outside of the building which in turn set fire to the building. This was a reference to an incident that occurred in South Oxfordshire, UK on January 15th (15/6/15) in which a man set fire to several buildings before driving a car loaded with gas cylinders into the HQ of the local council causing millions of dollars of damage. As the man appears to have been motivated by a dispute over local planning policy it is arguable that this could be classed as an act of terrorism. 

I think it is likely that all this talk of how easy it is to do so much damage with just a vehicle and a few compressed gas cylinders would have reminded Sali of that factory making compressed gas cylinders that he regularly delivered to as part of his job as a delivery driver. In that he could well have seen an opportunity to both let out some of his anger at the world and keep up with his Internet peers. Fortunately he rapidly discovered that actually it's not that easy to do a lot of damage with just a vehicle and some compressed gas cylinders.

In terms of whether or not the incident can be classed as a terrorist attack Sali is alleged to have beheaded his boss and scrawled Jihadist slogans on the severed head before displaying it publicly on a fence outside the factory beside an Islamic flag which is probably the closet thing to an ISIL flag he could find at short notice. As such I think it is fair to classify the incident as a possible Islamist terrorist attack.

Further evidence of that it provided by the fact that although he has admitted to the murder Sali is denying that it was a terrorist attack instead claiming that it was a work place dispute that got a bit out of hand. It seems to me that his intention here is to turn himself into a martyr for the cause by using his trial - in contrast to the South Oxfordshire fires - to show how the west is prejudiced against Muslims in the hope of rallying more people to his cause. 

Obviously the French authorities do have the option of not trying Sali as a terrorist and the UK has the option of trying Andrew Main - the alleged South Oxfordshire - attacker as a terrorist. After all - as I well know - if Main is convicted of arson with intent to endanger life or criminal damage with a reckless disregard for life he is going to receive a life sentence either way.

What I found ironic about the situation is that the previous night European Union (EU) leaders were meeting to discuss a plan to distribute irregular migrants entering the EU from North Africa across members states in order for them to be processed. Essentially what is happening is that nations such as Italy and Greece can't cope with a mass migration of 250,000 people per year. As a result these migrants are not being properly processed instead running free across the EU including in Calais, France where they are causing great disruption trying to enter the UK. The idea of a quota system would allow for these migrants to be held in detention centres across the EU until we can firstly make sure that they're not ISIL fighters and then if they're economic migrants rather then legitimate refugees deport them.

The UK is very opposed to this idea and is refusing to participate in a voluntarily quota system. However at exactly the same time the UK ended up inadvertently providing a prime example of why a coordinated EU response to the migrant crisis is a national security priority. 

I just wonder if we all promise UK Prime Minister David Cameron that we won't count the EU quota as part of his much vaunted migration targets he'll stop behaving like such an utter child.

17:10 on 30/6/15 (UK date).