The secret evil lurking behind terror

WHAT do modern terrorists have in common? Yes, they are fanatical, and usually (but not always) from ethnic minorities.

But there’s something else very interesting. They are invariably on mind-altering drugs, usually cannabis. The Bombay killers took cocaine and steroids. Anders Breivik took steroids. At least one of the Boston bombers, the Tsarnaev brothers, smoked cannabis (one heard voices in his head, one of them was without doubt a dope dealer). Lee Rigby’s killers, Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo, smoked (a lot of) cannabis. Omar El-Hussein, the Copenhagen killer, had twice been arrested for cannabis offences. Seifeddine Rezgui, the Tunisian beach killer, was a cannabis user. Ayoub el-Khazzani, who tried to kill passengers on the Amsterdam to Paris train, is a convicted dope user. The Charlie Hebdo killers, the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly were known cannabis users. The killers of two Canadian soldiers, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau and Martin Couture-Rouleau, were cannabis users.

And now we know that the same is true of the November 13 killers: Ibrahim and Salah Abdeslam were heavy users of marijuana. Abdelhamid Abaaoud had likewise ‘drifted into a life of thievery and drugs’. Omar Ismail Mostefai was on police records for buying illegal drugs. As for Hasna Aitboulahcen, who was blown to pieces in the St Denis siege, she ‘hung around with drug dealers’.

Don’t try to avoid the significance of this information by accusing me of saying things I don’t.

The point here is that drug abuse appears to be a common factor. So why completely ignore it? If the police of North America and Western Europe stopped turning a blind eye to it, they might be a lot more use in the struggle to defend us all from terror.