Returning Jihadists | Journeyman Pictures

Transcript

Transcripts Tunisia

00:00

O-tone combat video and music

12:04

OVERVOICE MAN 1

Here are your fighters Baghdadi. IS fighters, they are surrendering.

12:15

Go!

Are you scared?!

Where are you from?!

12:19

Where are you from!!!

12:20

OVERVOICE MAN 2

Tunisia.

12:22

OVERVOICE MAN 1

Let’s go Tunisian, let's go!

O-tone music

12:30

Each society suffers from its own pain.

And Tunisia hurts for its lost sons.

Lost to brutal and senseless terror.

12:46

Here in the suburbs of Tunis almost everyone knows a jihadist fighter.

12:50

O-Ton Road

12:54

From the suburb of Le Kram alone, hundreds of young people have left to fight.

1:04

Jobs are rare and the days are long.

There is 30% youth unemployment in Tunisia. This resident says today's youth is willing to buy into anything. The educational opportunities for Tunisia’s children are limited, and the state abandons teenagers to the street.

1.28

O-tone kick

1.31

Q Abdel Sayeh, resident of Le Kram

OVERVOICE MANN:

15/16 is a very difficult age.

1:35

O-tone Nicole

OVERVOICE WOMAN:

Do you think the teenagers here are easily recruited?

1:38

OVERVOICE MANN:

You can recruit them for anything! Even the devil could recruit them.

Anyone who gives them money can manipulate them. Criminals, drug traffickers or even human traffickers. The boys do everything. They spend their days in the streets or the entire night on the computer on Facebook, you can really get them for anything.

2:02

O-tone music

2:05

Politicians have long looked the other way, effectively granting IS recruiters free rein in Tunisia’s mosques.

It is a sensitive issue.

2.19

O-Ton Nicole:

OVERVOICE WOMAN:

What is the problem?

2.21

O-tone policeman:

OVERVOICE MAN

Nothing. This is only for your security.

2.24

We are stopped by the police. It seems as if the authorities do not want film crews here. They accompany us to the station. They want to be sure we are taking the train back to the city centre.

2:40

Which we do.

Along with some thrillseekers.

2:48

O-tone music

2:53

The next day we travel to the coast. Hammamet was once a popular tourist destination, especially for Europeans. Since the 2015 terrorist attacks in Sousse, tourism in the region has dried up.

Hammamet is an epicentre for Salafists, explains journalist Montassar Sassi. He shows us one of their mosques. But before we are able to film, the police stop us again.

The situation is tense.

3.25

In 2010, Tunisians initiated the Arab Spring. Unfortunately, Islamists were the first profiteers of this new-found freedom.

A few days after the revolution, radical preachers used the chaos to begin recruiting.

3:38

O-tone prayer call

3:40

Q Montassar Sassi, journalist

OVERVOICE MANN:

After the revolution, people benefited from the system and the timing. The police were not present. So they turned the mosques into their own territory. I do not want to bracket all of them together: But there were many "victims" who "went" from here.

4:01

O-tone Nicole

OVERVOICE WOMAN:

Why do you say victims?

4:03

Q Montasser Sassi, journalist (no longer write)

OVERVOICE MANN:

Victims, because those were the ones who were converted, people whose minds were manipulated. Most of them were 15/16-year-olds and had not yet known anything about life, thinking they would find paradise.

4.16

The imam in question is now out of the country. However, Montassar Sassi, is still a target for disgruntled Islamists. During our interview, a passing Salafist gestures that he would like to see him dead.

4.30

He says he has got used to the death threats.

4:38

The next morning, we meet with Mr. Sadok. His son has been missing for three years.

4:45

There are thousands of parents like him. The UN estimates that over 5000 young people have moved from Tunisia to fight for Jihadist organisations.

From the Sadok family’s block alone five young men have left. Nevertheless, little action has been taken against the imam of the mosque.

5:05

Q Mr. Sadok,

OVERVOICE MAN

They have his dossier. But he's still here. He's still out and about.

5.18

Mr. Sadok is heavily burdened by his son’s departure. The intolerable waiting, and worse the relentless self-reproach.

His son was a footballing talent, with an offer to play in Lausanne. Then a severe ankle injury ended his career abruptly. Slowly the radicalization began. At some point, he stopped shaking women’s hands.

5:42

Q Mr. Sadok,

OVERVOICE MAN

Suddenly, he often stayed in his room alone crawling through an online world. Sometimes he came out, laughing, "Dad, look, they've cut someone's head off. Look! "

I shouted at him: “Stop! No! I do not want to see something like this. Why are you looking at that? He said: No, no. It's nothing.

But of course: He watched IS videos. I did not get it because I had never heard of IS before.

6.13

One night his son left. He travelled through Algeria to Turkey, and on to Syria. In his first phone call he said, "Dad, I am now in the Islamic state". Since then, Mr. Sadok rarely hears from his son. He only calls once a year.

6.29

Q Mr. Sadok (not write)

OVERVOICE MAN

He cannot talk openly on the phone. They are being monitored. His sister once said to him, "Flee! Come back home. He said, don’t say something like that on the phone ever again. If I escape, they'll catch me and cut my throat.

On the phone, he said to me: Tell my mother - it takes a lot of courage - tell my mother and you too Dad: Pray for me! They brought me into a situation that I never thought would be like this.

7.24

O-Tone bird chirping

7.27

Mr Sadok struggles to reconcile himself with his son’s actions. He tries to convince himself that his once gentle son could never kill. But he is not always successful.

7:42

O-tone car driving / music

7:46

Fadoua Braham is a human rights lawyer. She represents those returning from the Islamic State, her three phones are constantly ringing these days. She does not think that the budding jihadis knew what they were getting themselves into.

8:02

Q Fadoua Braham, lawyer

OVERVOICE WOMAN

They knew they would carry weapons over there and go to war, to jihad. They knew that. But this BRUTAL, I do not think a normal person with a normal life could imagine the true meaning of weapons, bullets, blood, death. They couldn’t know that.

8.27

Fadoua tells us the returnees are usually sentenced to 8 to 12 years in prison. There are few de-radicalization programs. Her clients are young, and often traumatized. Many wanted to die as martyrs.

8:44

Q Fadoua Braham, lawyer

OVERVOICE WOMAN

One of them said to me, "I wanted to die a martyr, to give my family access to paradise." He believes that he can take the members of his family to paradise.

08:58

O-tone music

2.9

Thousands of young men, full of fundamentalist fervour, are now returning to Tunisia. Around 900 have already returned.

9.12

O-tone music

9.15

Some are in prison. Some are under house arrest. But some of the most dangerous jihadis are still at large: having slipped in anonymously.

9.27

O-tone music

9.29

After long and careful negotiations, we are finally able to meet a jihadi.

9:34

O-tone music

09:37

K is in hiding, having secretly returned from Syria.

We meet in a secret location. Our informant says this man is a veteran. He had fought for Al-Qaida in Iraq during the 2000s. He has now travelled from Syria on a false passport, to settle a family feud.

5.10

Q K., Jihadi

OVERVOICE MAN

I've moved to the caliphate because I believe it's the right thing.

Because all Muslims around the world are a single body, and if we get hurt, on our foot for example, the temperature of the entire body rises. This is how we work.

We are not fighting to kill the others. We are not villains, we are not cannibals. We are human, we respect others.

10:45

O-tone Nicole

OVERVOICE WOMAN

But you are experienced in killing other human beings?

10:50

Q K., Jihadist

OVERVOICE MAN

No, I have no experience in killing. I have experience in defending myself. They are not the same.

11:00

Q Fadoua Braham, lawyer of IS returnees

OVERVOICE WOMAN

The people who are in prison are the young ones, the poor, the naive. But the bigger question is not who is in prison but who is out there?

And then: Will those who are outside accept the separation of state and religion and the freedom of the individual? I do not think so. They have their own idea of society and their ideals for which they have fought and maybe they will continue to fight for it. They are dangerous. For us and for the state.

11:34

O-Ton Road

11:36

Often there is a lack of evidence for taking part in the war, and for atrocities committed abroad.

‘K’ is one of those under investigation by the intelligence services.