Brutal IS videos appeal to psychos
VOLATILE MIX: It can be conduit for psychopaths’ violent desires, say experts
NOT all jihadists are psychopaths, and not all psychopaths turn violent. However, when a person craving violence is drawn in by the Islamic State ideology offering them glory and a sense of belonging, it provides a volatile mix that can lead to the kind of massacre seen in the south of France last week, experts say.
French investigators are at a loss to explain the motives of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Boulhel, a Tunisian who crushed 84 people to death with a truck in an IS-claimed attack in Nice after an apparent lightning-fast radicalisation.
He is the latest in a long line of attackers inspired from afar by IS extremists to be described as suffering from mental or personality disorders.
Like Omar Mateen, who shot dead 49 people in a gay Orlando nightclub, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was cruel to his wife and children, according to prosecutors, and was reported to be chillingly calm during the attack.
Investigators found gruesome evidence on his computer of corpses and searches for images of car accidents, and those interviewed by police said he had shown no sign of religious fervour until recently.
“Could he have become extremely religious willy-nilly, or was he cherry-picking what he likes about IS, because what he really liked was the violence?” said Mary-Ellen O’Toole, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation profiler.
“IS didn’t create this guy. He was well on his way, and IS was a conduit.”
Profiling terrorists is a major headache for security and intelligence forces, with motives as wideranging as the kind of people drawn to carry them out.
“Terrorist acts are behaviours, with all kinds of motivations and combinations of motivations.
“The acts and motivations are usually logical, not ‘crazy’ or ‘senseless’, to the perpetrator,” forensic psychiatrist William Reid said.
“History and current news is full of examples of killing people without mental illness or instability.”
However, experts are not surprised that IS, with its brutal propaganda videos, appeals to those considered mentally disturbed.
Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert with the United States-based Rand think tank, said IS’s brutal online propaganda would likely only appeal to those who were “already sliding between a fantasy world and a real world”.
“It is difficult to remotely motivate ordinary individuals to carry out horrendously destructive and selfdestructive acts. IS, in particular, is a magnet for psychopaths.”
Jenkins said the poor level of understanding of Islam of many jihadists meant religion alone could not explain their acts.
“Radicalisation may consist of nothing more than embracing IS’s flag. The religious component may
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Boulhel be no more than brief encounters on the Internet.”
IS “will applaud their actions, it will make them a hero. It offers identity, meaning, participation in an epic struggle. It offers them a passage to paradise”.
Many people interviewed by investigators described LahouaiejBouhlel as “someone who did not practise the Muslim religion, ate pork, drank alcohol, took drugs and had an unbridled sexual activity”.
When he was 19, his father took him to see a psychologist, who told L’Express news magazine that he “suffered from an altered reality and behaviour problems”.
Investigators found he had pored over websites researching vehicle accidents, Bastille Day festivities and the Orlando shooting.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said about eight months ago, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had shown videos of a hostage being decapitated to a friend, and he had a “clear, recent interest in the jihadist movement”.
“This is a person who days before the incident was researching what he was going to do, fuelling his obsession with violence by watching this stuff. That’s not mentally ill, that is thinking strategically.”
Psychopathy is a personality disorder, not a mental illness, although it can be present alongside psychological disorders.
“He did a recon beforehand, he was taking pictures of himself on the day of the attack. If he knew what he was going to do later that night, he certainly wasn’t stressed by it.”
While unable to say whether Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had mental illness, O’Toole said the majority of his traits were “only seen collectively in someone who is psychopathic”.
As their warning behaviours would only be visible to family and friends, they need to be trained to spot them, she said. AFP