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An Interview with Rachid Kassim, Jihadist Orchestrating Attacks in France
By Amarnath Amarasingam
“I migrated to Syria one year ago, but now I am sad,” Rachid Kassim, a 29-year-old French jihadist tells me, in his first-ever interview. “A lot of us are jealous of brothers who attack in dar ul-kufr,” he said, using the Arabic term denoting non-Muslim lands. “We believe that even a small attack in dar ul-kufr is better than a big attack in Syria. As the door of hijrah [migration] closes, the door of jihad opens. If I stayed in dar ul-kufr, I would do an attack there.”
Words like these from jihadists like Kassim have heightened the concerns of security agencies across Europe and North America. If supporters of the Islamic State are prohibited from traveling to join their ranks in Syria and Iraq, will they instead turn their gaze inward? Over the last several months, Kassim has been quite vocal on Telegram, a messaging application, which also allows individuals to create channels where they can broadcast their message to the masses. Telegram has increasingly become the platform of choice for jihadist movements, particularly after Twitter became more committed to shutting down pro-jihadist accounts.
On his now-defunct Telegram channel, Sabre de Lumière (Sword of Light), Kassim, who authorities say is behind several plots in Europe, has been calling for attacks in European countries, as well as assassinations of religious scholars, journalists, and political figures. From Syria, Kassim has been linked via Telegram to a number of individuals in Europe willing to answer the Islamic State’s call for homegrown attacks. These individuals include: Larossi Abballa, who stabbed to death a policeman and his wife in Magnanville in June, two 19-year-olds, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, who a month later killed Jacques Hamel, an 85-year-old priest in Normandy, and to Inès Madani and the attempted plot to car bomb the Notre Dame cathedral in September.
For Kassim, plots in Europe and North America by inspired actors are justified retaliatory attacks. “France is targeting hospitals, targeting civilians,” he says, “They suffer every day under France and Europe’s bombardments. Violence did not originate from us. France and the USA started the killings. Once they stop, we’ll stop.”
When asked about these plots and his involvement, Kassim would not elaborate. “I am very proud of them, very very proud,” he said, speaking about Kermiche and Petitjean. “To me, these are role models and heroes. In terms of my role, secret services are aware of it. I have nothing to add.”
While it is clear that Kassim has been inspiring attacks in France, it is not at all clear whether he has been directed with such a task from ISIS leadership. “The least we can say is that he has a green light for what he’s doing,” according to Guy Van Vlierden, a journalist for the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws who closely tracks European jihadist networks. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be possible to continue from within IS territory.” Some analysts also suggest that similar Telegram channels exist aimed at inspiring attacks in Germany and other countries.
In early October, Kassim’s Telegram channel disappeared, and he has not responded to private messages in several weeks. It is unclear whether he has been told by Islamic State media to cease his online activities. In January 2016, British jihadist Omar Hussain was rebuked by the so-called Islamic State Media Centre for his online activities. “You have been previously informed and prohibited from publishing your material, on any platform,” the message read, “you must immediately close down the above mentioned pages. Further violations will come with serious repercussions and will be dealt with swiftly.”
According to Van Vlierden, there are reports that Kassim’s Telegram communications were being closely tracked by law enforcement. “His importance is diminishing on an operational level I think,” he says. “At an inspirational level though, his sudden notoriety can help him convince and recruit.”
Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a Belgian analyst of European jihadism, agrees. “He probably represents one of several Westerners who are directly reaching out to Islamic State supporters in the West in order to precipitate attacks in a more direct manner,” he says. “This is alongside more general calls for violence in their propaganda.”
The leadership of the Islamic State initially emphasized the need for hijrah, or migration, to ISIS territory. They argued that it is incumbent on Muslims to travel and live under the so-called Caliphate, where Islamic law, as they see it, is being implemented in its fullest and purest form. Attacking locally is a better option only if individuals are unable to travel.
“At the beginning, the caliphate called for hijrah,” Kassim tells me, “now, it is best to launch attacks in dar ul-kufr. Because hijrah is very difficult now.”
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Rachid Kassim was born in France in 1987 to a Yemeni father and an Algerian mother. The couple divorced when Kassim was 5. His mother took him to Algeria at a very young age, and they divided their time between France and Algeria until he was nine years old. He grew up in Oran, a beautiful coastal town in Algeria, important as a commercial center and port city. “I felt at home there,” he says, “there were some dangerous spots, but I was fine.”
Arriving back in France for a more permanent stay at age 9, Kassim says he immediately felt out of place. “I was in a school run by two homosexual principals,” he tells me, “France is a country of decadence. When I was at school, they tried to make me eat pork. I was so shocked that I flipped the table over, and my dad had to come and talk to them.”
In France, Kassim tried his hand at becoming a rapper. He chose the name
L’Oranais, or the man from Oran, to pay homage to the Algerian city in which he spent so much time as a child. “Music was secondary to my life,” he says, “I’m not sure why the media focuses on it so much. I had to choose at some point between music and religion. I chose the latter.”
Some reports have suggested that Kassim was radicalized in Algeria, and that he later fled from France to Egypt with his wife and three kids after encountering law enforcement scrutiny. “Some incompetent journalist printed this and then everyone else just repeated it,” he says. “I was never radicalized in Algeria. There were gangsters in Algeria, but not much religion. And I have never visited Egypt in my life. And I only have one little girl, not three kids. So it’s a complete failure on the part of journalists.”
“I loved jihad since I was very little,” he tells me. “When I took on individuals, they were bad people doing evil to others. I was not a bad person. We can say I had a foot in a good place and a foot in a bad place.”
His brothers and sisters, as well as his parents, are against jihad, Kassim says, but he speaks lovingly of a cousin of his, Abu Muthanna al-Jazairi. “He fought in Chechnya and Afghanistan, and was an important member of the Islamic State,” he tells me. Abu Muthanna died in battle, but little else seems to be known about him.
As Kassim became more radical in his views, it seems French law enforcement grew concerned. “I thought of attacking France when I was there, and my family was afraid because of it,” he said. “The cops knew about me. Every time I went jogging, there were always two cops following me. Then they hide. It was ridiculous.”
Kassim got married in 2010, but would not talk about his wife, refusing to provide her name, her ethnicity, or discuss anything about how they met. She does figure strongly, however, in the story he narrates about how they traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State. When I asked him about how he and his family came to Syria, he told me to be patient, that the story is “incredible” and that he requires time to tell me properly. Almost a week later, he would send me a long play by play of his migration from France to ISIS territory,
