
July 17, 2016
Peter Bergen and Van Schuster wrote for CNN about terrorist attacks in Europe:
There have been eight lethal terrorist attacks in Europe since 2014, five of them in France alone, carried out by ISIS or by "lone wolves" inspired by the terror group or by al Qaeda.
What do these attacks have in common? The terrorists are almost invariably criminals who have either served time in the French or Belgian prison systems, or they have been convicted for lesser offenses but have avoided jail time.
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who killed at least 84 people Thursday in Nice, France, had a long record of petty crimes. Bouhlel assaulted a motorist last year for which he received a six-month suspended sentence
It is not yet clear how exactly Bouhlel came to commit his terror attack. But it is striking how many of the terrorism cases in Europe share a jihad-crime nexus. By contrast, of the more than 300 individuals charged of a jihadist terrorism crime in the United States since 9/11, only about 10% had a background of crimes other than terrorism.