AN ENDURING THREAT: EUROPE’S ISLAMIST TERROR NETWORKS THEN AND NOW raising questions about how to ensure those found guilty of offences do not return to illegal Islamist activism on release. The identification of these connections also raises questions about how those on the fringes of the networks, as documented below in the case of Fatima Aberkan, can be identified and engaged with prior to their greater involvement in terrorist networks. 3.3 The Zerkani Network and al-Qaeda The connections in question revolve around the assassination of the Afghan militia commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, murdered in a suicide bombing two days before the 9/11 attacks. It has been suggested 1163 that the attack on Massoud, carried out by Tunisians Dahmane Abd el-Sattar and Bouraoui El-Ouaer, was ordered by Osama bin Laden in anticipation of any role Massoud might play should the US target 1164 Afghanistan and his Taliban hosts following the 9/11 attacks. Several terrorists profiled as part of the older network were involved in the assassination of Massoud, and a number of Belgium-based extremists convicted of involvement in the attack or associated with those involved would later be imprisoned for their involvement in the so-called ‘Zerkani network’. This group radicalised and recruited young men to travel to fight in Syria, including Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the leader of the team which carried out the Paris attacks in November 2015, and Najim Laachraoui, one of the suicide bombers who struck Brussels airport in March 2016. Abdelhouaid Aberkan, convicted as a member of the Zerkani network in July 2015, had previously been convicted in 2003 for his role in the assassination of Massoud, and is believed to have driven Abd el- 1165 Sattar to the airport as he departed on his mission to kill the Afghan warlord. Aberkan’s sister, Fatima 1166 Aberkan, meanwhile, was a close associate of Abd el-Sattar’s wife Malika el-Aroud and was arrested alongside her in 2007 in relation to an alleged plot to free the convicted al-Qaeda terrorist, Nizar Trabelsi, 1167 from prison before being released without charge. Fatima Aberkan was convicted in July 2015 of involvement in Zerkani’s recruitment network and sentenced to eight years in prison, which was increased to 15 years by an appeal court in April 2016.1168 A third member of the Zerkani network involved with the 1169 assassination of Massoud, Abderrahmane Ameroud, was convicted in 2005 as an accomplice to the 1170 attack and sentenced to seven years in prison. These historic connections between members of the Zerkani network who would radicalise the next generation of militants and the al-Qaeda-linked militants behind the assassination of Massoud demonstrate the direct line which exists between the Islamist terrorism of the early 2000s and today. The clearest example of this is the radicalisation of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who became associated with the Zerkani network on his release from prison in 2012 and was given a 20 year sentence in absentia in 1171 connection with his involvement with the network. Another of the Paris attackers, Chakib Akrouh, became associated with the extremist network related to Khalid Zerkani before travelling to Syria and was ! ! 1163 ‘France gives 5 who aided terrorism jail sentences of up to 7 years’, The New York Times, 17 May 2005. 1164 ‘Ahmed Shah Massoud: A Decade After His Murder, Would Afghanistan Be Different Were He Alive?’, Time, 9 September 2011, available at: http://world.time.com/2011/09/09/ahmed-shah-massoud-a-decade-after-his-murder-would-afghanistan-be-different-were-he-alive/, last visited: 9 August 2016. 1165 ‘Men jailed over Al Qaeda anti-NATO plot’, ABC News, 30 September 2003; Van Vlierden, G., ‘The Zerkani Network: Belgium’s Most Dangerous Jihadist Group’, The Jamestown Foundation, 12 April 2016; and ‘Country Reports on Terrorism 2004’, US State Department, April 2005, p. 45. 1166 Higgins, A. and Kimiko De Freytas-Tamura, ‘A Brussels Mentor Who Taught ‘Gangster Islam’ to the Young and Angry’, International New York Times, 11 April 2016. 1167 Van Vlierden, G., ‘PROFILE: PARIS ATTACK RINGLEADER ABDELHAMID ABAAOUD’, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 15 December 2015. 1168 ‘‘Papa Noel’—the militant recruiter in Brussels who groomed young men for violence’, Los Angeles Times, 28 March 2016; and ‘Brussels jihadists: Belgian recruiter Zerkani given longer term’, BBC News, 14 April 2016. 1169 Van Vlierden, G., ‘The Zerkani Network: Belgium’s Most Dangerous Jihadist Group’, The Jamestown Foundation, 12 April 2016. 1170 ‘Terror suspect shot and held by Brussels police 'had been jailed for seven years for helping Taliban assassinate Afghan leader two days before 9/11'’, Daily Mail Online, 26 March 2016. 1171 ‘Khalid Zerkani, Brussels’ jihadist preacher who ‘perverted a generation’’, France 24, 26 March 2016. ! ! 92 !