The radicalisation of Swiss Muslims

How do young men who grew up in Switzerland become extremists? Following this Swiss TV report on three cases, the Federal Intelligence Service confirmed that of 15 Swiss citizens who have travelled to Syria, five became Jihadists. (SRF/swissinfo.ch)

A team from the Swiss TV programme Rundschau investigated the cases of three known Jihadists from cantons Valais, Vaud and Lucerne, who converted to Islam and found their way to Syria to fight in the ‘Holy War’.

In the report, a security expert from the Federal Institute for Technology in Zurich, Lorenzo Vidino, explains how young Muslims become radicalised.

In a separate interview for Swiss TV, Markus Seiler, head of the Intelligence Service, said that terror acts had been prepared on Swiss targets, for example airports and international organisations in Geneva, and that on a scale of 1-10 for jihad terror activity, Switzerland was currently a 3 – “although this could quickly rise to a 6”.

The Intelligence Service has also recruited informants outside mosques, Seiler confirmed.