After his arrest, investigators found the 12-year-old had been gorging on videos of decapitation and torture, including 1,739 jihadi videos and bomb-making tutorials.
The boy’s descent began with Quran searches and led to encrypted chats and ultraviolent propaganda from extremist groups like Islamic State. French prosecutor Paul-Edouard Lallois warned he risked becoming a “completely dehumanized soldier.”
Across Europe, minors are increasingly appearing on terror radars, with France’s anti-terror unit charging 19 minors in 2023 alone.
Extremist content is just a click away, with radicalization sometimes beginning through violent pornography or a fascination for gory images, leading to jihadi decapitations.
The mini-series “Adolescence” was spot on about this issue.
At one point the father says to his wife he thought their son was safe being in his room on the internet … when in reality he was accessing all the dark web abuse he could find.