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Johan Leman, 6 September 2021

There’s something I’m wondering… Salah will now, in September 2021, in Paris, answer questions about who he is, and what motivated him in November 2015, almost 6 years ago… As far as I’m correctly informed through what some told me and through the media (see e.g. Etty Mansour’s book Convoyeur de la Mort), Salah made statements, back then, in 2015, about what motivated him, but he mostly kept silent.

Meanwhile, he has spent almost 6 years in the prisons of both Bruges and Fleury-Mérogis. He has had a lot of time to think and answer for himself, to create an identity, and he has been in contact, at least occasionally, with other jihadists. In Bruges, for example, with Nemmouche. The literature often describes how prisons formatted and gave shape to jihadist Islamism. Logically one could assume that this will also have happened to Salah. Will the reasons and the logic he now will give for his actions in September 2021, really be the real reasons and logic that were at play at the end of 2015?

Spontaneously, I would think that one may seriously doubt this. From what I heard and read about him, five years ago, the image mainly emerged of someone with a serious identity crisis, who related from time to time also to his vision on islam. I suspect that six years later, he will like to be seen primarily as a hero of political Islamism, with much more emphasis on islamist commitment than was really the case in his confused head in 2015.

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