Family Terror Networks

Copyright © 2019 by Dean C. Alexander

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-54395-323-7 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-54395-324-4 (ebook)

Contents

Introduction

General Principles of Terrorism

Characteristics of Family Terror Networks

Case Studies Involving Family Terror Networks

Predicting Family Terror Networks

Law Enforcement Responses to Family Terror Networks

Epilogue

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

An Unlikely ISIS¹Wife

It was a short, unexpected romantic episode. Daniela Greene was a Czechoslovakian-born, fluent-German-speaking former FBI contract linguist with a top-secret clearance. Her suitor was Denis Cuspert, German ex-rapper (Deso Dogg) turned ISIS propagandist and fighter (Abu Talha al-Almani). Things did not turn out well for either of them.

In June 2014, Greene submitted a falsified US government Report of Foreign Travel form, FD-772. In that document, Greene stated that she planned to visit her parents in Germany. She lied to her FBI supervisor and chief security officer at the Indianapolis FBI office regarding her pending travel arrangements. In reality, she intended to travel to Turkey. From there, she sought to live with Cuspert in Syria.

Greene purchased a round-trip ticket from Indianapolis through Chicago to Turkey. Her return flight was scheduled barely one day after her arrival. She did not proceed with that departure. Rather, less than a week later, she purchased a one-way ticket from Indianapolis through Toronto, with a destination of Istanbul. From Istanbul, she reached Gaziantep, Turkey, less than twenty miles from the Syrian border. From Gaziantep, a Cuspert contact aided her in crossing into Syria. Once there, Greene met Cuspert and warned him she worked with the FBI and that the agency was investigating his activities.

In late June 2014, the pair married in Syria. They lived there until August 2014, when Greene left Syria for the United States. Soon, she comprehended her mistake in marrying an ISIS operative she had investigated. At the time of her travel to Syria and nuptials with Cuspert, Greene was already married to a US soldier.

Days after her return to the United States, Greene was arrested for violating 18 USC section 1001, making false statements to the federal government in relation to international terrorism. Greene pleaded guilty to that charge. She received a two-year sentence rather than eight years, as allowable. The US Attorney’s Office recommended the reduced sentence as Greene had cooperated and substantially benefited the government.

Greene was released from prison in summer 2016 after having served her sentence. Subsequently, Greene worked as a hostess at a hotel lounge in Syracuse, New York.² In January 2018, German authorities disclosed that Cuspert was killed while fighting for ISIS in Syria.³

What Happened in Vegas

Amanda Woodruff met Jerad Miller at a flea market in Lafayette, Indiana. Before they met, Jerad was incarcerated for drug offenses. The pair married in 2012, despite the opposition of Amanda’s father, Todd Woodruff. Woodruff was particularly concerned about the couple’s nine-year age difference. He recalled, I begged her not to marry him. I begged her not to move to Las Vegas. He was into all this Patriot Nation and conspiracy theory stuff, and the next thing I know, her phone was getting shut off, and she was getting isolated from us. The whole world was against him [Jerad], and he was just, he was just nuts.⁴

As a couple, the Millers delved into a host of extremist ideologies. Among the radical tenets they followed were white supremacy, sovereign citizenship, and militia themes. The Millers’ neighbors in an apartment complex in Nevada said the couple talked about killing police officers. The pair also handed out white-power propaganda to residents there.

The couple spent time at the ranch of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who, along with supporters, had an armed standoff with government agents over grazing rights. Bundy ranch representatives asked the Millers to leave the homestead, as their ideals were too extreme. Jerad was captured on a video at Bundy’s ranch threatening law enforcement: I feel sorry for any federal agents that want to come in here in and try to push us around or anything like that. I really don’t want violence toward them, but if they’re going to come bring violence to us—well, if that’s the language they want to speak, we’ll learn it.⁵

In a June 2014 posting on Facebook, Jerad wrote a pseudo-manifesto, noting in part, Those of us who know the truth and dare to speak it, know that the enemy we face are indeed our brothers. Even though they share the same masters as we all do. They fail to recognize the chains that bind them. To stop this oppression, I fear, can only be accomplished with bloodshed.⁶

There were threats of violence in a 2011 Facebook posting, Amanda wrote, The people of the world are lucky I can’t kill you now but remember one day I will get you because one day all hell will break loose and I’ll be standing in the middle of it with a shotgun in one hand and a pistol in the other.⁷

In June 2014, the couple shot and killed two Las Vegas police officers. The murdered lawmen, Igor Soldo and Alyn Beck, were eating lunch at a Cicis Pizza restaurant. Jerad shot Soldo in the head and Beck in the throat. Amanda then joined in shooting and killing Beck. Next, the Millers covered Beck’s body with a yellow Gadsden flag (Don’t Tread on Me) and swastika. Additionally, the Millers pinned a note on Soldo’s body: This is the beginning of the revolution.⁸

After removing the officers’ guns and ammunition, the Millers shouted that the attack was the beginning of the revolution.⁹ The Millers then entered a nearby Walmart and yelled, Get out. This is a revolution. The police are on the way.¹⁰ Joseph Wilcox, a shopper with a concealed weapon, confronted Jerad. However, Amanda intervened and fatally shot Wilcox. Subsequently, the Millers exchanged gunfire with police at the Walmart. During the firefight, the couple was wounded, Jerad fatally. Amanda shot herself and later died at a hospital.

Cousins in Crime¹¹

In late 2014, an undercover FBI employee posted a Facebook friend request to Illinois-based Army National Guard Specialist Hasan Edmonds. In January 2015, the pair communicated on multiple occasions. Hasan explained that he and his cousin, Jonas Edmonds, wanted to go to Syria and join ISIS. Hasan also revealed that his cousin’s prison record might impede his travel overseas. If so, Jonas would send his family to Syria prior to his launching a martyrdom attack in the United States.

If restricted to remain stateside, Jonas would use Hasan’s military identification to access a military installation in northern Illinois where Hasan worked. Once there, Jonas planned to commence an attack with others. Jonas foresaw he would kill between 100 and 150 persons. Prior to the projected strike, Hasan would travel to Syria. The Edmondses interacted with undercover FBI employees online and met face to face with another undercover FBI employee. The Edmondses believed that they were conferring with ISIS operatives.

In March 2015, Hasan was arrested while seeking to fly from Chicago’s Midway Airport to Egypt, while Jonas was detained at his home. The cousins, both US citizens, were charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, ISIS. By December 2015, they pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge. Also, Hasan pleaded guilty to seeking to give material support to ISIS. Likewise, Jonas admitted lying to police in relation to an international terrorism offense. In September 2016, Hasan was sentenced to thirty years in prison. Jonas received a twenty-one-year prison sentence.

What are Family Terror Networks?

The cases of political violence just shared—Cuspert/Greene, Millers, and Edmondses—are illustrative of an emerging and troubling threat, family terror networks. Prior to expounding on the latter term, it is conducive to define families. Families¹² comprise individuals who descend from the same ancestor, as in shared blood (consanguinity). Families have affinity resulting from marriage and adoption. They encompass the range of spouses, siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins, parents-in-laws, and brothers/sisters-in-law, to name a few.¹³ Families include kin based in one nation or several countries. The family is one relationship or social bond that can serve as a terror node.

Family terror networks (or alternatively, family affiliated terrorism) involve two or more people from the same clan who support the threat or use of terrorism. Kin terrorism has appeared across diverse views from religiously motivated precepts to national liberation, and from hate-based ideologies to other viewpoints. Family structures enable higher instances of conversion to radical beliefs given the imprimatur of credibility and trust that attaches within the family unit as opposed to unaffiliated networks.

This subset of terrorists comprises a full range of socioeconomic, racial, religious, ethnic, national-origin, and foreign-affinity ties. Terrorists aligned with hierarchical and network groups and unaffiliated cabals are represented in this form of terrorism as well. Family affiliated terrorists include group leaders, operational cadres, active supporters, and passive supporters.¹⁴ They use terror tactics including bombings, suicide bombings, and gunfire, among others, with variances in operational stages.

Patriarchs strongly influence their kin to become terrorists. Wives and other females may sometimes embrace violence. The Black Widows of Chechnya are the most notorious of such radicals. These women had husbands in Chechen jihadist terror groups. Their spouses were killed by Russian forces or died during a terror attack on a Russian target. Also, the term is often used more expansively to include women whose other family members were killed by Russian forces in the Chechen conflict.

Family networks afford exposure to terrorist ideology, recruitment, funding, training, and operational opportunities more easily than those outside the familial structure. From their private setting, family members disseminate doctrine, culture, and grievances to their kin. These trusted family voices might engender cohesion and unity of purpose while inciting hostility against external threats. The family’s animus might be targeted at government, industry, nonprofits, nongovernmental organizations, the public, or a segment thereof.

There are many factors affecting the susceptibility of individuals to becoming terrorists, including: socioeconomic factors, geography, real or perceived victimization and marginalization, infatuation with an extremist ideology, personality traits, mental health challenges, and influences of technology. Analogously, criminologists proffer that low self-control is associated with higher levels of deviance and criminality irrespective of the strength or weakness of one’s social bonds.¹⁵ Social network analysis also demonstrates that, to some, nonfamilial influences can hasten participation in terrorism.¹⁶ Contributing to involvement in extremism are the contacts, ties, and connections of the individuals in the network.¹⁷

Still, the belief system, values, power, control, and capabilities based in a family can afford member participants achievable, though sometimes measured, terror operations. Abandonment of terror plans in a family cell is less likely because it brings shame and dishonor to the family member. These conditions greatly contribute to radicalism being disseminated and maintained absent other factors.

Family terror network attributes may include self-sufficiency, autonomy, and flexibility. These might not exist when family members take direction from a non-family terror network. A family’s informal and decentralized structure is conducive to successful terror operations. Families have an ingrained resiliency as challenges are often encountered fervently.

Many people embrace extremism despite not being introduced to such ideas at home. Yet this book proffers that family terror links appear in radicalism more willingly and thoroughly than those without kinship. The core argument of this work is that family structures are very influential in potential terrorist participation. This volume addresses terror networks developed within families and shares strategies to withstand this dynamic threat.

Family Terror Networks: An Increasingly Prominent Type of Terrorism¹⁸

In the United States, as internationally, families have been cajoled by Islamic State propaganda. For instance, in 2014–2015, a Mississippi couple (Jaelyn Delshaun Young and Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla); a Texas family (Michael Wolfe and Jordan Furr), comprising a husband, a wife, and their children; and three Illinois siblings (the Khans), including two minors, were apprehended at different airports while trying to join the self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

In 2014, German authorities seized the two Farah teenage sisters from Colorado and their female schoolmate after they arrived at Frankfurt Airport. The trio was en route to Turkey intending to reach the Islamic State. In 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 persons and injured scores in an ISIS-inspired attack in San Bernardino, California.¹⁹ In that same year, brothers Alaa and Nader Saadeh and three others conspired to travel to Syria and enlist with the Islamic State.

Other noteworthy family-linked terrorist attacks in the United States include Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and two sets of brothers who performed as hijackers on 9/11. A set of brothers were on two different flights during the September 11 attacks: Wail and Waleed al-Shehri (American Airlines Flight 11) and Nawaf and Salem al-Hazmi (American Airlines Flight 77). Additionally, three cousins participated in the 9/11 incidents: Ahmed and Hamza al-Ghamdi (United Airlines Flight 175) and Ahmed al-Haznawi (United Airlines Flight 93).

Also, family affiliated terrorist actions have taken place globally. The cabal involved in the 2002 Bali terror bombings plots included three brothers: Ali Ghufron, Ali Imron, and Amrozi Nurhasyim.²⁰ A fourth brother, Ali Fauzi, spent three years in prison for terror offenses unrelated to the Bali attacks.²¹ More recently, French nationals and brothers Brahim and Salah Abdeslam participated in the November 2015 Paris attacks. Brahim conducted a suicide bombing at a Paris restaurant. Salah rented a car that brought a group of attackers to the Bataclan concert hall. Salah abandoned his plan to conduct a suicide bombing that evening. Subsequently, Salah fled to Belgium, where he and several coconspirators eluded authorities for months. Ultimately, he was captured in Belgium and extradited to France.

Salah had served time in prison for armed robbery with the mastermind of the Paris attacks, Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Abaaoud and other members of his cell, along with his female cousin, Hasna Aitboulahcen, were killed in a police raid following the November 2015 attacks. Abaaoud recruited his thirteen-year-old brother, Younes, to move to Syria and join ISIS.

Other contemporary instances of family connected terrorism abroad include the August 2017 jihadi terror cabal in Spain consisting of multiple sets of brothers²² and terror family links in the jihadi-inspired May 2017 Manchester suicide bombing.²³ In May 2018, two jihadi-aligned families were responsible for a series of suicide bombings in Surabaya, Indonesia, targeting churches and law enforcement.²⁴

The dynamics and instances of domestic and international family terror networks brought to the forefront this terror phenomenon. Its attributes have profound effects on the nature of terrorism and counterterrorism. Consequently, a work addressing this theme is long overdue.

Why Family Terror Networks are Important²⁵

Family terror networks are important for multiple reasons. Households are an integral part of traditional social networks. This paradigm allows radicalization and recruitment to occur in a setting of trust, confidence, and privacy. The family unit has a greater level of legitimacy than the outside world. Even after detection of a kin-linked terror cell, deradicalization and disengagement programs may not succeed as family members may impede participation.

Competing or incompatible opinions have trouble piercing the family network’s ideological wall with outside viewpoints. Trust ties arising from friendship, religious institutions, and schools are less sustained than family ties. It is improbable that kin will abandon their terrorist activities when extremism was sourced at home. Frequently, vocalizing concerns about engaging in terrorism is barred within a familial terror cell.

The zeal and skills gained through a family setting are magnified more than otherwise. Household members can teach the best practices of extremism to others. Parents or other kin may intimidate household members to support radicalism or even carry out a martyrdom operation. Often, the bullied family member agrees out of duty, honor, or fear. This radicalism exploits the trust and security features that exist in households.

Attracting terror prospects from within a family provides a close source of personnel. Keeping a terror cell limited to kin enhances security as only trusted individuals take part in the cabal. A paucity of numbers may limit the scope and severity of the cell’s intended operations. Yet, given their growing prevalence in terror operations, police would benefit by regularly exploring radical elements within households. Yet family loyalty characteristics sometimes make