Well-educated ‘Jihadi John’ no surprise to experts

The profile of “Jihadi John,” the university-educated Londoner whose masked face is emblematic of the grisly executions by the Islamic State group, is vastly different from that of the marginalized men who carried out terror attacks in France and Denmark. That comes as no surprise to those who work with tracking such threats, who say there is no typical terrorist. Investigators’ jobs have become tougher than ever because of the range of terrorist profiles, and the growing number of potential suspects. Experts cite three to four types of profiles, with some variations. But they agree that the profile of Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwait-born man in his mid-20s, raised and educated in Britain, is nothing new.

It is evident that it is very complicated for intelligence services. Afterward, we say, ‘Why didn’t we see him?’

former anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere

With multiple profiles and often “weak signals” that must be detected in advance, not everyone ends up on, or stays on, the radar. Alain Bauer, a leading criminologist who has advised French presidents, says the problem is not about gathering information but about analyzing it. The day after a terrorist attack, investigators are often looking through “20 pounds of files” that they had before and that shows that in “99 percent of cases,” they might have been able to prevent the attacks if they had only understood the data they had access to, he contended.