The Complex History of the Terrorist Attacker in Bulgaria Shows the Cosmopolitan–And Naively Western-Enabled–Nature of Contemporary Terrorism
by Barry Rubin
Seven Israeli tourists were killed and thirty-two injured in the bombing of a bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, a Black Sea resort. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the bombing was sponsored by Iran.
This might be true but if the deceased bomber is the man who is being accused by Bulgarian authorities it tells us something about the complex nature of contemporary terrorism. His name is Mehdi-Muhammad Ghezali and he was born not in the Middle East at all but in Stockholm, Sweden, a country whose citizenship he held, in 1979. His parents were Algerian and Finnish.
Ghezali travelled to Portugal where he was arrested for armed robbery in 1979. Perhaps he was at the start a simple criminal. Many such people have been recruited first to impassioned Islamic belief and then to revolutionary Islamist terrorism. Given the mercy of the Portuguese system, however, he served ten months of a ten-year sentence and returned to Sweden.
He then went to England where Ghezali studied at the mosque of the radical cleric Omar Bakri Muhammad. Next he went to Pakistan and Afghanistan where he consorted with known al-Qaida agents. By 2001 he was arrested after the U.S. takeover of Afghanistan and spent about three years in Guantanamo Bay prison. He denied any links to al-Qaida. Sweden’s prime minister asked that Ghezali be transferred to a Swedish prison and the United States agreed.
But when he arrived in Sweden in 2004, the Swedish government did not charge him with anything so Ghezali walked free.
He was arrested and briefly detained in Pakistan in 2009 while trying to cross the border into Afghanistan illegally.
And now he shows up in Bulgaria to commit an act of terror.
What does this background show us?
First, that seemingly poor people—with no visible means of support—can zip around the world with ease, someone obviously paying for these excursions.
Second, that the world of jihad has wide borders. In Ghezali’s case his recruitment, indoctrination, and training encompassed Sweden, Britain, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and possibly Portugal. Indeed, Ghezali was European-born, still another in the growing list of revolutionary Islamist terrorists who is the product of such an environment.
Third, that terrorism is not being carried out by desperate, repressed people but relatively coddled ones. Twice—or three times if one includes his detention in Pakistan—Ghezali was let go due to political pressure and misplaced mercy in his favor. Unless they choose to blow themselves up, terrorists seem to be able to live on the kindness of their enemies. One man’s terrorist is another man’s–or more likely Western governments’ poor misunderstood victim.
Ghezali’s pattern of activities seems to imply that he is al-Qaida rather than an Iran operative. But perhaps more information will be released demonstrating some link to Tehran. |
