LONDON
(AP) -- The Tsarnaev brothers wreaked carnage in Boston. The Kouachi
brothers attacked Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. In Brussels,
officials say the El Bakraoui brothers struck the airport and metro this
week, killing more than 30 people.
Several
recent terror attacks have been inspired, and possibly directed, by the
Islamic State group, but executed by close-knit gang of friends - and
often brothers.
Blood ties have long been a
feature of criminal networks, from the outlaws Frank and Jesse James to
the family structure of the Mafia. The phenomenon extends to terror
plotters for reasons that experts say are both logistical and social.
Individual
radicalization often comes through close friends and family members,
rather than just external teaching and preaching. And the tight sibling
bond can be a tough nut for law enforcement to crack.
"A
terror cell made up of two brothers cannot be infiltrated. It's the
most secure network possible," said Claude Moniquet, a French security
analyst who works in Brussels.
Some recent sibling attackers:
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Ibrahim
and Khalid El Bakraoui have been identified by a Belgian prosecutor as
two of the bombers who killed more than 30 people in Brussels on
Tuesday. Elder brother Ibrahim, 29, blew himself up at the airport.
Khalid, 27, detonated his bomb at the Maelbeek subway station.
It's
not clear how much Belgian authorities knew of them. Turkish officials
say the older brother was caught in June at the Turkish-Syrian border
and was deported to the Netherlands. Turkey says it warned both Belgium
and the Netherlands that he was a "foreign terrorist fighter."
---
Salah
and Brahim Abdeslam - Brussels-born French brothers of Moroccan descent
- were among attackers who killed 130 people in gun and bomb attacks in
Paris in November. Brahim, 31, blew himself up outside a cafe, while
26-year-old Salah, who had handled car rental and other logistics, fled
Paris on the night of the attacks. He was arrested last week in
Brussels.
The brothers had run a bar in
Brussels' Molenbeek district, a neighborhood with links to several
recent jihadi plots. Both had served jail time for petty crimes - it was
in prison that Salah met Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who would become the
ringleader of the Paris attacks.
---
Paris-born
Said Kouachi, 34, and his 32-year-old brother Cherif stormed the office
of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, shooting a dozen
people dead. They were killed two days later in a police raid on their
hideout outside Paris.
As children they spent
time in state care after the death of their mother; as adults they
drifted into low-paying jobs, petty crime and a circle of Islamic
radicals. Their links to Islamic militants brought them to the attention
of authorities years before the Charlie Hebdo attack. Cherif was
stopped from going to Iraq in 2005 and jailed in 2008 for helping to
send militants to fight U.S. forces in Iraq. Said had spent time with an
al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen.
---
Dzhokhar
and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, brothers of Central Asian origin, planted two
pressure-cooker bombs along the route of the Boston Marathon in April
2013, killing three people and wounding 260.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died days later after a gun battle with police. Dzokhar, then 19, was shot, wounded and captured.
At
his murder trial, defense lawyers argued that Dzhokar had acted under
the sway of his older brother, a former boxer who had embraced radical
Islam and masterminded the attack. A jury nonetheless convicted him of
the bombings last year. He has been sentenced to death.
