Terrorists proving harder to profile

Craig Whitlock, Washington Post Foreign Service

12 March 2007
21
ZUTPHEN, Netherlands - On the surface, the young Dutch Moroccan
mother looked like an  immigrant  success story: She studied business in
college, hung out at the pub with her friends and was known for her
fashionable taste in clothes. So  residents  of this 900-year-old river town
were shocked last year when Bouchra El-Hor, now 24, appeared in a British
courtroom wearing handcuffs under a long black veil. 
36
Prosecutors  said she had covered up plans for a terrorist attack and had
written a letter offering to sacrifice herself and her infant son as martyrs.

People in Zutphen may have been surprised,

but terrorism suspects from atypical backgrounds are becoming increasingly
common in Western Europe. With new plots  surfacing  every month, police
across Europe are arresting  significant  numbers of women, teenagers,
white-skinned suspects and people  baptized  as Christians. In the past,
these groups were considered among the least likely to embrace radicalism.

The characteristics of those being arrested are so  diverse  that many
European  counterterrorism  officials and analysts say they have given up
trying to  predict  what sorts of people are most likely to become terrorists.
Age, sex, ethnicity, education and economic status have become more and
more irrelevant.
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Terrorists Proving Harder to Profile by Craig Whitlock | engelsk.gyldendal.dk | © Gyldendal

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