Istanbul attack suspect ‘shy student’

Bulgarov went to Egypt to learn Arabic

IKON-KHALK, Russia, July 12, (RTRS): When Rahim Bulgarov graduated from college in southern Russia with a diploma in tourism, his teacher expected him to go on to further study, or fulfil his dream of opening a car repair shop.

Instead, Bulgarov started going to the mosque with followers of a pious strain of Islam, and, according to a close relative and Egyptian security sources, went to Cairo last year to study Arabic.

Turkish state media have identified Bulgarov, 23, as one of the suspected suicide bombers who attacked Istanbul’s Ataturk airport on June 29, killing 45 people and wounding hundreds.

Several of the attackers were from Russia or ex-Soviet countries, making it the deadliest foreign attack by militants from that region since the Boston marathon bombing in 2013, carried out by two young ethnic Chechen brothers.

In the space of two years, Bulgarov changed from a shy young man who led a secular lifestyle to a suspected jihadist bomber, according to Reuters interviews with his teacher, an imam, a classmate and the close relative.

His case shows the challenges that Russian security agencies face identifying potential security threats out of the thousands of young people in Russia who are turning to ultra-conservative forms of Islam.

Three Egyptian security sources told Reuters Bulgarov spent 7 months and 12 days in Cairo, leaving in January this year, and that he signed up for Arabic classes at Al-Azhar University, an Islamic centre of learning.

“He lived in a flat with another young Russian man in the Ain Shams area,” said one of the sources, referring to a suburb of Cairo.

Bulgarov was not on the radar of Egyptian security services until Russian authorities contacted them around a week ago seeking information on him and any other Russians he mixed with in Cairo, said the same source.

Bulgarov left Egypt on Jan 13 for Turkey, according to the three Egyptian sources.

Some time after that, he returned to Russia and was interviewed by the Federal Security Service (FSB), which is responsible for counter-terrorism, and had to undergo a lie detector test, according to the relative, who did not want to be identified.

The relative said Bulgarov was then allowed to go home.

“He passed the test, he was fine,” said the relative.

Reuters could not confirm that the interview, a routine procedure in Russia that does not necessarily mean the authorities thought he was a security threat, took place. Local police and the FSB did not respond to requests for comment. BERLIN, July 12, (Agencies): A German jihadist was sentenced to prison Tuesday on war crimes charges after posing for pictures in conflict-torn Syria with the severed and impaled heads of two government troops.

Aria Ladjedvardi, aged 21 and with Iranian roots, received a prison term of two years, handed down by the Frankfurt regional court.

The court heard that the man, having been radicalised in Germany, travelled to Syria for at least several weeks in early 2014, where he joined a militant identified only as Vedat V, who remains at large.

In March or April, jihadists including Vedat V attacked a Syrian army checkpoint near the town of Binnish, Idlib province, captured at least two troops, beheaded them and impaled their heads on metal rods.

“The accused posed with the dismembered heads and let himself be photographed three times, so as to mock and belittle the deceased, whom he considered ‘dishonourable infidels’” or non-believers, the court said in a statement.

Vedat V later uploaded one of the images on Facebook.

The pictures were also found stored on a computer in Germany and on the mobile phone of the mother of the accused, said the court.

Ladjedvardi had earlier told the court

Bulgarov grew up in KarachaevoCherkessia, a Russian region on the northern slopes of the North Caucasus mountains where many people are Muslim.

Islamism

But unlike other parts of the North Caucasus, such as nearby Chechnya and Ingushetia, there was no strong tradition of hardline Islamism or rebellion against Moscow’s rule.

Bulgarov’s family home is in the village of Ikon-Khalk, a settlement of the Nogai people, a Turkic ethnic group.

His upbringing was comfortable. His father is a tractor driver. His grandmother owns a deli store in the village which, among other items, sells food cooked by his mother.

Putting Bulgarov through college to get his tourism diploma would have cost his family nearly $3,000, according to Mardjan Dagujieva, the director of the college, a substantial sum by local standards. At the college, Bulgarov was shy. “When he dared to say a word in class, that was already a shock for us,” said Yevgeny Romanenko, a classmate.

He said Bulgarov at that time smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol - both habits he did not want to be in the incriminating pictures, and that he “could not imagine that they would be circulated on social media”.

He admitted that he was given weapons training, but insisted he was not part of any jihadist group throughout his trip to Syria.

Meanwhile, Germans have become far more fearful in the last year, with a possible terrorist attack, political extremism and the social effects of Europe’s migrant crisis topping their list of worries, a survey showed on Tuesday.

Just over a year before a federal election in Europe’s biggest economy, the annual study by insurer R+V showed a 10 percentage point increase in its annual “fear index” of Germans to 49 percent.

“Never before in the course of our surveys have peoples’ fears risen so drastically within a year as in 2016,” said Brigitte Roemstedt, head of the R+V Info Centre which conducted the survey of 2,400 Germans.

Deadly Islamist attacks hitting neighbouring France and Belgium have put Germany on high alert. In addition, more than one million migrants have entered the country, many from war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq, fuelling concern about mounting costs and integration.

“Terror attacks, riots by extremists but also political polarisation following uncontrolled mass migration are shaking

which are forbidden according to most interpretations of Islam.

His teacher at the college, Gor Kurginyan, said Bulgarov was one of his best students with a dream to start a small business.

“He planned to launch a car repair shop along a road in his neighbourhood,” said Kurginyan.

Bulgarov graduated from the college in 2011, and his teacher expected him to either pursue the workshop plan or keep studying, maybe at university in the nearby city of Pyatigorsk.

But when Kurginyan met up with some of his ex-students about two years ago, he heard the unexpected news that Bulgarov had devoted his life to Islam.

“I asked the guys: ‘And how is Rahim?” said Kurginyan. “They told me he had ... turned to Islam.”

After Bulgarov graduated from college, he had been working on a farm and in construction in his Ikon-Khalk, according to his close relative.

But the village was changing. In 2013 or 2014, young local men started visiting the mosque at the end of his street, drawn to practising Islam for the first time in their lives, and in particular to a very strict interpretations of the faith. Germans’ characteristic need for security,” said political scientist Manfred Schmidt of the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg who was a consultant for the survey.

In related news, Germany is affirming its growing role on the world stage in new security guidelines that mark another step away from its caution after World War II.

A draft defense policy paper obtained by The Associated Press Tuesday and due to be presented on Wednesday states that “Germany is a globally highly connected country ... which has a responsibility to actively shape the global order.”

It formalizes what leading officials have been saying for the past 2 years — a period in which Germany has played a leading diplomatic role in Ukraine’s conflict and joined a campaign to support the fight against Islamic insurgents in Mali, among other things.

Germany also sent weapons to Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, breaking with a previous reluctance to send arms into conflict situations. But although it has stepped up its diplomatic and military role, there’s still little chance of the government — which has to get all military missions approved by Parliament — dispatching combat troops to global hotspots in the same way as European allies France and Britain, and still less unilaterally.

This mirrors a trend throughout the North Caucasus. According to a report this year by the International Crisis Group, poverty, corruption and police crackdowns in the region have left many young people feeling angry and persecuted.

Some of them have been drawn to radical forms of Islam which they feel offers a way to address injustices.

“More people started going to mosque,” said the imam at the mosque in Bulgarov’s village, Abdulla Kumykov. “It had been very few, about 10 people at Friday prayer. And now it’s 40-50, (taking up) about half of the prayer room.”

When a Reuters reporter visited last week, several men in their 20s and 30s hung around the mosque. They refused to speak with the female reporter, and insisted she did not cross into the mosque’s courtyard, saying women were not allowed in.

The imam, who could not explain why there had been an influx of new worshippers, spoke to the reporter outside the perimeter of the mosque.

He said Bulgarov had first come to the mosque around 18 months ago, and had prayed there regularly until he left for Egypt.