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CNN Live Event/Special
Horrifying Truth About ISIS; Terrorism Behind the Masks; Troubled Young Generation in Danger of Being Brainwashed. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired March 31, 2017 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00] ANNOUNCER: The following is a CNN special report.
ARWA DAMON, CNN HOST: An altar boy from Belgium joins the Jihad in Syria.
YOUNES DELEFORTRIE, ISIS VETERAN: We have to implement. It's a must.
DAMON: And swears allegiance to ISIS along with hundreds of other Belgian. If you had been asked to execute someone would you have done it?
DELEFORTRIE: It is Islamic law.
DAMON: Part of an unlikely pipeline terror from the heart of Europe.
DIMITRI BONTINCK, JEJOEN BONTINCK'S FATHER: They are like vampires smelling blood.
DAMON: This is the story of why they go.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was the period of the five-star Jihad, where all was brilliant and life was glorious. So everybody wanted to go.
DAMON: And what happens when they come home?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Islam is going to Europe and we are going to take over.
DAMON: So Europe lives in fear, not sure who comes back to live and who comes back to kill. That's a lot of killing power. It's the sore story of an ordinary kid who joined the most brutal terrorist group of the world.
DELEFORTRIE: We are Muslims who are dreaming of a caliphate. So it will happen. It's a promise of Allah.
DAMON: A summer concert in Belgium, this is the heart of Western Europe. A magnet for tourists from all over the world, charming, grand, the picture of old world wealth and elegance.
(CROWD CHANTING)
DAMON: This is the other side of Belgium, home to some of the most dangerous radicals anywhere. Religious fanatics who want to replace Belgium's democracy with an Islamic state or caliphate ruled under the most radical form of Sharia law.
FOUAD BELKACEM, SHARIA4BELGIUM SPOKESMAN: Every Muslim on earth believes that democracy is evil and Sharia is good.
DAMON: They are not just preaching, they are also recruiting for the world's most reviled terror group, ISIS. At least 540 Belgians have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight Jihad say researchers. Per capita that's more than any other Western European country.
Meet Younes Delefortrie, a 28-year-old ISIS veteran. Younes offers a rare insight into the mind of an unrepentant ISIS supporter.
DELEFORTRIE: We are Muslims who are dreaming of a caliphate. Every Muslim in the world, even if he has a beard from one meter to one millimeter, a Muslim has to believe in a caliphate.
DAMON: That dream led Younes to the civil war in Syria and to ISIS. He says he never killed anyone there.
Let me ask you something, if you had been asked while you were in Syria to execute someone would you have done it?
DELEFORTRIE: Look, in Islam there is the pledge of alliance.
DAMON: Would you have done it?
DELEFORTRIE: Because you have to obey the Emir.
DAMON: So you would have done it?
DELEFORTRIE: That is the Islamic law. And believe me, it's not a funny thing to execute people. It's something terrible. But yes.
DAMON: Now he is back, more than a hundred Belgians who have returned from Syria and Iraq. Graduates of ISIS and other extremists groups here now walking the picturesque streets of Belgium.
DELEFORTRIE: We have to implement the Sharia. That's a must.
DAMON: So, do you think, you know, we hear from a lot of people who support ISIS that they believe that this ideology will spread to Europe and across the whole world. Do you believe that?
DELEFORTRIE: It's already here. I said it before. It's already here. You cannot hide Islam. The ideology is Islam.
DAMON: But people will want to know, would you ever participate in a terrorist attack?
DELEFORTRIE: Why should I? I'm here to live.
DAMON: So that's a no.
DELEFORTRIE: It's not -- it's not on my agenda.
DAMON: But Younes and those like him are what Europe fears most. GUY VAN VLIERDEN, HET LAATSTE NIEUWS REPORTER: People who come back
after they are trained in Syria are very dangerous people one day. Wanted to, wanted to attack.
[22:05:07] DAMON: A lesson Belgium has learned the hard way. A year ago, ISIS murdered 32 people here and injured 300 others.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: In two locations in Brussels, one at the crowded subway station of the central Belgium capital, the other at Brussels main airport.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: And remember what happened four months earlier many Paris. A massacre organized by ISIS operatives from across the border in Belgium.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PIETER VAN OSTAEYEN, HISTORIAN: The whole of Europe is going to suffer because of this. But the problem originates from Belgium.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Belgium is one of 26 European countries with open borders that allow people to move and work freely. But crossing those borders you can see how easily terrorists can also exploit that freedom.
We are now driving from Belgium into France. I do have my passport with me but I won't actually need it because essentially there is no check point here. It is free and open highway. It's like driving from Nebraska into Kansas. And in fact, the only way you can even tell that you have move into another country is because the cell phone carrier changes.
So this is Belgium's new normal, soldiers and heavily armed police on patrol day and night, even as ISIS supporters are hidden in plain sight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAN VLIERDEN: And the most frightening thing, thousands of European people saying that ISIS is cool.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: That's right. They think ISIS is cool and Younes Delefortrie is one of them. He was actually raised Catholic.
Baptized as Michael, he even became an altar boy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: We were raised like normal people with holidays. On Sunday, we thanked God and that's the way it is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: As Younes tells it his journey from the mainstream to the margins of hell began with a troubled adolescence, smoking weed and trying harder drugs. His salvation as he sees it, was discovering this book, the way of the Muslim, a detailed guide to living a highest life every hour of every day. He converted to Islam and changed his name to Younes, Arabic for dove. He saw his new religion as a step up from Christianity.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: I can compare it with buying a computer. If you know there's a Windows 10 you don't going to go out with Windows XP.
DAMON: So you saw converting to Islam as an upgrade?
DELEFORTRIE: It's an upgrade, yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Upgrading opened the doors to Belgium's large Muslim community where a small but vocal subset of Islamist fundamentalists was emerging. Younes joined their ranks, attracted by the simplicity of a world where identity is based solely on religion.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: As a Belgian...
DELEFORTRIE: I'm not Belgian. I am a Muslim.
DAMON: You're not a Belgian.
DELEFORTRIE: No. I'm a Muslim.
DAMON: So you don't feel Belgium has given you anything?
DELEFORTRIE: No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Actually Belgium has given him something, money, about $500 a month, a welfare check.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: I'm going to get my money from the government. They want to keep me here they have to pay.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: An AK-47 bb gun is a small symbol of his defiance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm always fascinated by weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: In some ways Younes is not that different from other young Belgians. He likes to play video games and banter with his younger brother.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: Can you see me doing this in real life?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: But in the next breath he can simply shrug off the gruesome public executions that ISIS proudly claims as its trademark beheading journalists like Jim Fowley and Steven Sotloff.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: Journalists were going to war zones, they are not over there to glorify ISIS. They're there to make bad propaganda about Muslims and Islam.
DAMON: And that would include me, presumably?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: When we come back, the petty criminals turned street creature who inspired Younes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[22:10:04] BELKACEM: Islam is going Europe and we are going to take over anyway.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: And later, Younes on trial walks free.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: Just like any other citizen of this country. So, we're lucky.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: And shopping for an assault rifle on Belgium's black market.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DAMON: When Younes Delefortrie, a former Catholic altar boy in Belgium converted to Islam, he says it brought stability to his chaotic life. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: You're searching your identity like everybody else in the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: His search lead him to Syria to join the world's most violent terror group, ISIS, and then back to Europe a zealous soldier of God.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: You can hold back and do your prayers and be satisfied. Or you can go further and try to practicize what you're learning and that's the difference between like they say, the moderate one or being...
(CROSSTALK)
DAMON: Why do you make a face when you say moderate?
DELEFORTRIE: I don't believe in moderate Islam.
DAMON: Younes' spiritual guide was Fouad Belkacem, a silver tongue Bengali who masterminded one of the most defective networks in Western Europe for recruiting Jihadists.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[22:15:09] BELKACEM: We believe that the Sharia will dominate, the Sharia will be implemented worldwide.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Belkacem is a car salesman turned street preacher with a criminal record that authorities say includes assault, drug dealing and hate speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BELKACEM: We believe that Allah is the creator. Allah makes the laws. He is the one who tells us what's allowed and what's forbidden.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: In 2010, Belkacem formed an organization called Sharia4Belgium. He used Belgium's freedom of speech to trash democracy and advocate strict Islamic law.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BELKACEM: Democracy is the opposite of Sharia and Islam. And the Muslim that says he is against Sharia he is not Muslim. It's impossible. It's the same thing as saying I was speaking to a Christian Jew or to a Jewish Muslim or something like that. It's impossible. (END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Belkacem's vision of a Ethiopian society appealed especially to young idealists.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BELKACEM: Sharia implemented worldwide that means no more criminality, no more drugs, no more raping, no more pedophilia, and no more economic crisis.
Simple. Come live as a Muslim.
BONTINCK: It's like they are vampires who are smelling blood.
DAMON: Dimitri Bontinck's son, Jejoen joined Sharia4Belgium in 2011.
BONTINCK: We were hopeless.
DAMON: The old Jejoen was a typical teenager, even competing on a TV talent show as a Michael Jackson impersonator. But moon walking was a world away from the new Jejoen.
BONTINCK: First of all, he stopped to eat western food. Second, going to the mosque. He became very religious, you know. And not shaking hands to women anymore. He starts to take distance step by step from his own family, from his own parents. So all what we built, what we created, it was gone like snow for the sun, you know.
DAMON: Did you try to talk to him about it?
BONTINCK: Of course, absolutely. So many times we were asking the questions. Is there something we can help you with? Did we do something wrong? Did we fail as parents?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Dimitri finally got some answers by chance when he saw Belkacem on the evening news standing above Jejoen at a Sharia4Belgium rally.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BELKACEM: The American dream.
(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Dimitri took a bold step and invited Belkacem to his house to confront the man he believed had brainwashed his son.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BONTINCK: I had never met someone who is charismatic and so intelligent. It's like the devil was sitting on my table, believe me. (FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
DAMON: Eighteen-year-old Nora Verhoeven was also taken in by Belkacem. Her mother Samira says Nora was an idealist determined to make a difference but lost.
(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
DAMON: Samira like most of Belgium's Muslims seized Jihadist recruiters like Belkacem as a grave threat.
But Belkacem's version of Islam struck a chord with some young Muslims. Many faced discrimination in education and jobs and live in culturally isolated worlds.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DYAB ABOU JAHJAH, AUTHOR AND ACTIVIST: The level of exclusion in this country and the level of animosity and the discourse of people in power towards the Muslim community in this country, Belgium is on the bottom of Europe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: It led to a deep sense of resentment which Belkacem exploited. Younes says Sharia4Belgium gave him a sense of purpose. He took to the streets and the internet protesting Belgium's secularism with its ban on full facial veils for women and even head scarves for Muslim schoolgirls.
Over time, the Sharia4Belgium message became more extreme, the tone more hateful.
(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[22:20:05] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was really becoming worrying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Alain Winants was Belgium's top internal security official at the time. He foresaw a future of terror and bloodshed and rang the alarm. The political leaders were dismissive.
ALAIN WINANTS, FORMER HEAD OF THE BELGIAN STATE SECURITY SERVICE: I heard that these people are not extremely dangerous. You're facing a bunch of clowns with long beards and white gowns.
DAMON: What was your response to that? You're the head of intelligence services. In your opinion there is legitimate threat here.
WINANTS: There is a built of frustration. We saw that there was bigger and bigger radicalization.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Winants turned out to be right. The Sharia4Beligium group was a pipeline to ISIS and other extremist groups in Syria's civil war, leaving behind desperate heartbroken parents. Among those that who went, Dimitri's son, Jejoen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BONTINCK: Once your child is missing when you know it's in the hands of radical Islam and have gone, left, to Syria, it's a nightmare.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Jejoen would eventually return home and testify against Sharia4Belgium.
As for Samira, she has not seen her daughter, Nora since she left for Syria four years ago. Video posted on Nora's Facebook page shows a girl she no longer recognizes.
(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
DAMON: But for Younes going to Syria was the answer to his prayers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: Finally there's a place on earth where we can be a Muslim for the full 100 percent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: When we come back, life with ISIS.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: It's better than living here. And it's the honest answer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:25:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DAMON: In December 2013, 25-year-old Younes Delefortrie arrived in Syria. The country was two and a half years into a brutal civil war.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was massacring his opposition.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KERRY, FORMER UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: The question is when are we in the world going to do about it?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: While the west wrung its hands over what to do and who, if anyone, to support, militant Jihadist groups quickly moved in. Younes joined the most violent of them all, Islamic state of Iraq in Syria, ISIS.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: They were clear in what they trying to accomplish, to go fight for the sake of Allah.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: ISIS's unbridle brutality yield its huge gain on the battlefield. The group would soon declare it had carved out a caliphate, the size of Michigan according to U.S. authorities, ruled under its version of Sharia law. Younes denies committing atrocities in Syria.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: You didn't kill anyone while you were there?
DELEFORTRIE: No.
DAMON: You didn't kidnap anyone?
DELEFORTRIE: Arrested somebody, yes. But that's not kidnapping.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Talking to him about his experience there, it's hard to fathom how anyone can endure tactics so ruthless that even Al Qaeda disavowed them. To which Younes casually responds.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: It's a war zone, so it's a normal thing. People die. It depends on which continent you are in. In America, they are executing people with needles, with electric chairs. It's also execution.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Amid the ruble and death and chaos of the civil war there was an allure for young zealots.
The Jihadi lifestyle looks cool at least in the online postings. They presented themselves as God's warriors, Islamic bad asses.
And while street gangs in America flash their gang signs, Jihadist here point one finger for one God, a sign of the Muslim proclamation of faith. There is no God but God, a message sent to the soaring sound track of Islamic a cappella known as nasheed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OSTAEYEN: You just needed to snap your finger and you had two recruits. It is definitely the feeling of brotherhood. Being in a community that helps you out when you are in shit, they pull you out. When you need money for something they help you out. The feeling of the belonging and the fact that they were taking part
of a greater project that you, as a Muslim, you were suppressed all your life by illicit western government who didn't abide the law of Allah and now we have the chance to go fight for a caliphate. They felt that they were important.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:30:00] DAMON: Younes says he was stationed in this villa and that one of his assignments was guarding prisoners.
What kind of prisoners?
DELEFORTRIE: Like people who stole something, burglars or something like that. So they were being locked up, for example, two or three weeks in jail.
DAMON: So no hands were cut off?
DELEFORTRIE: Not at that moment.
DAMON: Were you disappointed?
DELEFORTRIE: No. Of course. Everything takes its time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Not all of his associates were so restrained. Hasham Shaib (P) is one of Younes's close friends. Here they are at a Sharia4Belgium rally. And here is Shaib (Ph) more recently in an ISIS propaganda video. He stands above a man accused of spying then coolly he pulls the trigger.
And according to evidence gathered by Belgium intelligence he was not the only one. One example, picked up on a phone tap featured a young Belgian describing the day captured Syrian soldiers were summarily executed. Everyone cut someone's throat.
Another Belgian phoned his girlfriend about shooting a kidnapped civilian who didn't pay the requisite ransom. "I wish the filming worked when I killed. I placed the camera badly and it filmed nothing."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Were you aware of the behavior of some of your other Sharia4Belgium colleagues who were bragging to their friends about shooting people in the face and cutting people's heads off.
DELEFORTRIE: They were young people.
DAMON: Meaning?
DELEFORTRIE: Who wouldn't?
DAMON: Who wouldn't brag about cutting someone's head off? (CROSSTALK)
DELEFORTRIE: Yes, it's something it's not the right thing to do of course, but if you're doing something like that or you're executing somebody or you're killing somebody on the battlefield, keep it for yourself and Allah, because you're doing it for him, not to brag out, of course.
DAMON: But what were they doing cutting people's heads off in the first place? Or shooting people in the face?
DELEFORTRIE: You have to ask them. I am not responsible for what they did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Younes deflects criticism of ISIS's brutality by pointing to the way American soldiers photograph themselves, taunting Iraqis and the Abu Ghraib prison and urinating on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: It's also bragging, yes?
DAMON: Yes, but we condemn that.
DELEFORTRIE: Yes, we don't.
DAMON: We say that's wrong.
DELEFORTRIE: We condemn that in front of our God. We don't condemn people in front of other people. We don't criticize Muslims in public.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: After less than two months i Syria, Younes returned home to see his wife and children, an ISIS soldier back on the streets of Belgium.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: And I'm doing whatever I can to spread out the word of Islam. That's my goal.
DAMON: Nonviolently he says.
DELEFORTRIE: Not every Muslim with an ideology is a terrorist or is a potential time bomb who is going to explode in a shopping mall.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: But that is exactly what has Europe on edge, indoctrinated committed radicals like Younes returning from Syria have inflicted horrendous losses.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAN OSTAEYEN: Three years ago, the main idea was let's ignore them, let them leave. Right now the idea is these guys coming back to kill us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: When we come back, as innocent people die in Europe's great cities Younes prays for the killers.
DELEFORTRIE: I ask Allah to protect them and give them what they ask for.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:35:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DAMON: January 2014, Younes back in Belgium is under arrest along with other suspected members of Sharia4Belgium. The prosecutor charged it was a terror group with a pipeline to extremists in Syria and Iraq.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: I didn't kill somebody over there. I didn't shot somebody over there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Awaiting trial Younes spent two months behind bars with other radicals.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: Every jail in Belgium has now one or two people with what they call extremist thoughts or with a terrorism file.
DAMON: Did you have ways of communicating with each other?
DELEFORTRIE: Yes, I had an open regime. We did cards evening. We go playing football outside. It was not a punishment, to be honest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: More than 100 young men like Younes were coming home, some disillusioned about ISIS and its horrific violence, others desensitized and trained to murder.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DYAB ABOU JAHJAH, AUTHOR AND ACTIVIST: If you are already passed the stage of ideas and communication into the stage of fighting for an organization, you went there, trained, acquired the skills, you have to have a very suspicious attitude. We shouldn't be naive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: But Belgium had been slow to grasp the danger. May 2014, a man walked into the Jewish museum in Brussels and shot four people dead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALAIN WINANTS, FORMER HEAD OF THE BELGIAN STATE SECURITY SERVICE: It was the first time that we had serious terrorists attack on Belgium territory.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Police arrested and charged a 29-year-old French national. He denies being the killer. Authorities believe he had fought in Syria with ISIS.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GUY VAN VLIERDEN, HET LAATSTE NIEUWS REPORTER: It was kind of a moment where Belgium woke up because we saw a Frenchman acting in Belgium.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: It was beginning to look like there was a terrorist highway between France and Belgium, but when it came to security Belgium was wearing blinders.
[22:40:00] WINANTS: There was not the sense of urgency that exists now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: The first recognition there were systematic problems came with the Sharia4Belgium trial in September of 2014. Younes was found guilty of participating in a terrorist group and given a three year suspended sentence, a punishment he flouts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: As long as I do nothing that's against national security I can do whatever I want, just like any other citizen of this country.
DAMON: But you basically seem to be indicating that your punishment was a joke.
DELEFORTRIE: Of course, so we are lucky.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: As for Sharia4Belgium's leader, Fouad Belkacem, the judge ruled he was a driving force grapping young radicals for armed combat in Syria, and for that 12 years in prison. It was vindication for the man who had sounded the alarm before most people took it seriously.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WINANTS: You could say that is a victory in the sense that's when we warned a few years ago that Sharia4Belgium was a dangerous organization a radicalization organization, an organization that helped people going to Syria that we were on the right track at that time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: But the damage was already done. Several Jihadist networks were entrenched in Belgium, ready to exploit Europe's open borders. Paris, November 2015, with a plot launched from Brussels ISIS attacked.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Terror across Paris. It is a city under siege.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: The death toll now stands at 118.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: The world watched as the death toll mounted. And what did Younes think about the attacks? He saw them as payback for France's role in the bombing campaign against ISIS.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: It's a normal reaction. If you are attacking people, sometimes somebody will attack you back. If you spit in the air sometimes the spit will fall back in your own face.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: His sympathy is not with the victims but the attackers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: I ask Allah to protect them and give them what they ask for. That's everything that I can do.
DAMON: So in a sense you see them as heroes?
DELEFORTRIE: In a sense it's to Allah to decide whoever is right and who is wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Four months after the Paris attacks, March 2016, this time it was Belgium. Bombs in the subway and suicide attacks at the Brussels airport. Despite all the warning signs Belgium was grossly unprepared.
Younes says it took several days for police to question him about the Belgium attacks because they couldn't find him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Do you think they are keeping a close eye?
DELEFORTRIE: No. Not close enough, because with the attacks in Brussels they were searching because they didn't know where I was. They were calling at the doors of my sisters because they didn't know where I was staying.
DAMON: Do you find that shocking?
DELEFORTRIE: Shocking? It's a little bit funny actually. It's a little bit funny.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: When we come back. We were blindfolded. We have now arrived at this place and we are supposed to see a weapon. Just how easy it is for a terrorist to get one of these.
[22:45:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DAMON: Back in Belgium, Younes is stuck in a secular pluralistic world he despises. He is unrepentant about his time with ISIS in Syria.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Do you ever regret leaving?
DELEFORTRIE: I regret coming back.
DAMON: You do?
DELEFORTRIE: Yes. I want to live underneath an Islamic caliphate, yes. Underneath a system of Sharia. Is that a crime? No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: That profound detachment and disdain is what frightens authorities. And while they can guard the streets they cannot patrol the vast internet or any radical with a keyboard can open a recruitment center.
To see how it works we used a consultant to set up a Facebook page with a nom de guerre. He posed as a line of Jihad posting images that are popular with ISIS supporters. In just over a week, 223 total strangers wanted to be friends.
The majority from Belgium and France. In their profile pictures we found a sea of ISIS flags and praise for Mujahideen holy warriors. Several invited us to chat further on Telegram, an unscripted app used by ISIS. When we asked one are you in Syria he told us no, unfortunately, but I want to go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VLIERDEN: The youngest of all of those clowns and the most innocent girl in those circles can be the next suicide bomber in a European street.
(END VIDEO CLIP) DAMON: The most successful recruiters have an act for customizing their pitch. In prisons, for example, religious radicals groom their cell mates with a promise of redemption through Jihad.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[22:49:59] OSTAEYEN: It's like when you're drowning and you suddenly see that one single sticking out, just grasp it and they feel reborn when they come out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Reborn with a radical cause, and extensive criminal networks they can call on.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OSTAEYEN: If you go out to Syria and if you have a dozen of criminals friends back here in Belgium, you only need to make a telephone call and say, hey, bro, I'm coming back, I need something, I need a car, a safe house, I need a Kalashnikov. And so, OK, bro, no problem.
Getting a weapon really is that easy, even though Belgium has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the west. After a few phone calls and secret meetings, we met a small time drug dealer. He showed us an AK- 47, like the ones used in the Paris attacks.
(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
DAMON: So you're saying there are 20 bullets in each magazine. So that's a lot of killing power. Black market price tag, he says, about $3,000. So who will win this battle and how long will it take?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WINANTS: I don't want to be pessimistic, but I think that actions as those in Paris and in Belgium could and will probably happen again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Younes says he has no intention of attacking Europe. His focus is on the next generation. He named one of his sons Osama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Did you name him after Bin Laden?
DELEFORTRIE: Yes.
DAMON: You did?
DELEFORTRIE: Yes. And I'm proud of it.
DAMON: Why?
DELEFORTRIE: Because that man is a hero. What's the problem with that?
DAMON: He killed 3,000 people at a very conservative estimate.
DELEFORTRIE: If we have to condemn everybody who kills people, hell will be full.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: When we come back, he loathes Belgium's democracy but gladly collects his government check.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: I'm going to get my money.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:55:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: There will always be a line between you and me and that line is my religion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Younes Delefortrie wants to live under Sharia law. He hates democracy. He even joined ISIS, but on this day the ultimate paradox. It's pay day at the welfare office.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: I'm going to get my money from the government. Because they want to keep me here, they have to pay.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: But they're not paying anymore. Recently he got a job repairing bicycles. Even so, he embodies a serious dilemma for Belgium, how to distinguish free speech and religious liberty from life-and-death security threats.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DELEFORTRIE: You're feeling affinity with your people and we are feeling affinity with our people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: He chooses his word carefully, voicing support for violent Jihadists but denying he would use violence himself. I might be inclined to believe him but since we met Younes, he was been convicted of domestic abuse. He's obviously capable of violence.
Still, not every extremist becomes a terrorist but it leaves authorities here with a major challenge, to work out which radicals really are ticking time bombs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Do you think there will be more attacks?
VLIERDEN: I think the risk is very high, yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: In Belgium, the experts give a hodgepodge of prescriptions, and not always what you would expect. On the one hand, a secular Muslim writer calls for harsher punishments.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAHJAH: When it comes to people who link themselves to terrorist, I think we have to be very hard, zero tolerance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: While a former security chief says respect, due process.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WINANTS: It can be very frustrating, but we can't leave the surroundings of what law allows us to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: The vast majority of Muslims here rejects ISIS and see extremism as a scourge that hurts their communities but many feel increasingly alienated by the rise of right-wing parties and growing Islamophobia.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OSTAEYEN: That's exactly what is so frightening right now is that we are at this point exactly doing what the Islamic state wants.
DAMON: What do you mean by that?
OSTAEYEN: The Islamic states wants to drive what's between Muslims and non-Muslims in the west. Wants Muslims not to feel at ease, they want them to be infuriated, and to actually go out and join the Islamic state and carry out attacks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: It is a vicious cycle that will likely play out for years.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Do you see a future where Europe and the west will be under Sharia law?
DELEFORTRIE: It's reality. It will happen. It's a promise of Allah. (END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Authorities can go after ISIS on the battlefield, but they cannot kill an ideology.
[23:00:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
