He learned warfare in an al-Qaeda training camp, did time at Guantanamo and more time in a French prison. With such a resume, Mourad Benchellali may seem an unlikely youth counsellor but he is telling his story to young Europeans, warning them against the lure of jihad.
The 33-year-old Frenchman is one of a small number of Europeans presenting their jihadi past as an example for others not to follow. Many see men like him as a powerful tool to deter youth from heading to Syria while Western governments are wary of them.
‘Folly of holy war’ Benchellali meets with young audiences at least once a week in France, Belgium and Switzerland to persuade them of the folly of flying off to join the Islamic State or other groups waging holy war in Syria and Iraq.
A practicing Muslim, Benchellali above all strives to take the glamour out of jihad. As a 19-year-old, he viewed the voyage to al-Qaeda’s training camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as a romantic adventure. The reality, he tells youths, was a shock-grinding physical exercises in blazing heat, weapons training and propaganda videos in the evening, along with mind-numbing organisation rigorously enforced.
Benchellali clearly had the ear of some Muslim youths at a recent meeting in the immigrant-heavy Paris suburb of Gennevilliers.
“You are loaded into a machine, a very organised system,” he told his rapt audience. “You are thrown into another dimension.”
Benchellali is perhaps the only returnee in France now offering a reality check to those tempted by jihad, a stark story of misguided youth that may mirror the naive impulses of those setting off for Syria today.
For Benchellali is perhaps the only returnee in France now offering a reality check to those tempted by jihad lending a hand at a critical time is a “collective responsibility.” “Hearing that, I knew I had to explain,” Benchellali said. “Explain that this was a mistake.”
