Paris, after her judgment, the child’s mother was surprised to discover that 12 years learned to kill and stick in decapitation and torture videos so frightening that even French court officials hardened by the case looked.
The mother told criminal investigators that she had thought her son had been playing video games and making the duration of the task the hours she spent in her room.
The child’s descent to the darkest recesses on the Internet began innocently, with online searches about Islam after an aunt gave him a Quran as a gift, says the child’s lawyer.
From there, more automated search algorithms that direct the online experiences of the users and the child’s curiosity ultimately took him to encrypted chats and ultraviolent propaganda pumped by militants of the Islamic State and in another way that Waming and Video Gunks and Video Goups and video clones and videos, videos. The minds of the very young.
Paul-Edouard Lallois, The French Prosecator who secured the Boy’s conviction on two terror-related charges last august, says the thousands of images and other extreme content that the child viewed so war ped issh of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world World and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world The world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world Of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and of the world and the world and the world and the world and the world and of the world and of the works work to allow this child to recover normal bearings. “
The prosecutor believes that he left without avoiding, the child was in a trajectory to become a “complete dehumanized soldier” who risked to join the Rens of digitally radicalized teenagers in France and beyond for the terror of Exper. Hatch.
The huge violent content library, several terabytes of data, which the child accumulated included video tutorials about the manufacture of bombs, said the prosecutor.
“It is possible to completely fly the mental bearings of such a small child,” he said. “Do that for a few years and, even before having turned 18, he is already able to commit an attack and sausage things with just one knife.”
An emerging global threat
Throughout Europe and also, the image is similar: the agencies against terrorism are dealing with a new generation of attackers, conspirators and compliments of extremism that are young who never and have fed themselves with ultraviolents and potentially
Some appear on police radars only when it is too late, with a knife in their hand, since they carry out an attack.
Olivier Christen, the national anti -terrorism prosecutor of France who manages the most serious terrorist investigations in the country, has a first -hand vision of the increasing threat. His unit delivered preliminary charges related to terror to only two minors in 2022. That number jumped at 15 in 2023 and again last year, to 19.
Some are “really very, very young, around 15 years, which was something that was almost unheard of more than two years ago,” Christian said in an interview with Associated Press.
“It demonstrates the strong effectiveness of propaganda disseminated by terrorist organizations, which are quite good to attack this age group.”
The so -called intelligence exchange network of “five eyes” that usually avoids the center of attention, which includes the security agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is so alarmed that it touched the unusual action of the action in December of calling publicly to the collective front, crazy by the same credible terrorist threat that adults. “
In Germany, a task force of the Ministry of Interior launched after stabbing mortal mass last year is focusing on the social networks of adolescents, with the aim of counteracting their growing role in radicalization.
In France, the National Security Agency DGSI says that 70% of the suspects arrested for their participation in alleged terrorists are suddenly under 21 years.
In Austria, Security Services says that a 19 -year -old suspect arrested in August, with an 18 -year -old boy, for an alleged plot inspired by ISIS for those attending the concert of Slaghter Taylor Swift, was radicalized online.
He was also a suspended supporter of ISIS, 14, arrested in this February for an alleged plan to attack a Vienna train station, Austrian authorities say.
The VSSE Intelligence Agency in Belgium says that almost a third of the suspects arrested there to draw the attacks from 2022 to 2024 were minor, the youngest only 13.
The extremist propaganda “is just one click away for young people in search of an identity or purpose,” he said in a report in January, with radicalization at speeds that are “nothing less than meteoric.”
A porn path to yihadi propaganda
Contrarror researchers say that a child’s online radicalization can sometimes have been for only months. Digitally Nimble, children are experts in covering their footprints and bordering the parents’ controls.
The 12 -year -old girl had no idea that her son was consulting the extremist content, the family lawyer, Kamel Aissaui told the AP.
And unlike the previous generations of militants that were easier to track and monitor Becoaus who interact in the real world, their successors often interact only in digital spaces, even in encrypted chats, they say.
“They live on their phones, their tablets, their computers, in contact with people who do not know,” said a senior official of a European intelligence agency who spoke with the AP under anonymity to discuss their work of extremist activity.
Some begin “to imagine who would take the attack, how they would, making real recognition, looking for a weapon, consulting tutorials on how to make explosives,” said the official.
For some children, the process begins with a violent pornography or a fascination with bloody images, researchers say against terrorism.
From there, more clicks can lead to spooky murder videos of Mexican drug cartels and, ultimately, to Yihadi decapitations, torture and throat torture, in videos that occur with music and are groups.
“They are often heavy consumers of everything that is transmitted on the web and special things that are prohibited,” said Christian, the National French anti -terrorism prosecutor. “It is a kind of chain reaction that leads them to ultraviolence disseminated by jihadist movements.”
Children of all origins
Aissoui, the child’s lawyer, said the trial was so hard with the 12 -year -old that the audience had to stop twice because he was very distressed.
He says that children are not violent and were simply a victim of applications and other digital tools that expose children to extremist content.
“He was directed from one place to another, and so on, until he found things that he should never have seen,” said the lawyer.
The child is now in residential care without access to social networks, with specialized educators and regular visit rights for his parents, the prosecutor told AP.
Contrarrorism researchers say they are dealing with children with a variety of history. Some have behavioral difficulties and others tend to be lonely whose social interactions are largely virtual, but others do not raise concerns with their before attracting police attention.
The police analysis of the computer and phone of the 12 -year -old found 1,739 Yihadi videos, “a phenomenal amount of decapitation scenes, throat sequence, shootings,” said the prosecutor.
Hey, he also had practical videos about the manufacture of bombs and murders, including one that seemed to show the death of the real life of a tied man who was cut into the pieces.
“I have some horrible things in my career,” he said. “But this goes beyond all understanding.”