Terrorists Deceive and Exploit Young Recruits.

According to a United Nations report published in September 2007, the Taliban has been “recruiting” children from poor and uneducated households by abducting young boys or by promising gifts such as motorcycles and cell phones.

Terrorists also recruit those who do not fully understand that the mission they are being sent on is a suicide attack. A young Saudi, Ahmad al Shayea, was tricked into becoming a suicide bomber by al-Qaida when they asked him to deliver a tanker truck which they had rigged with a bomb.

Examples:

The Taliban tried to coerce six-year-old Juma Gul into being a suicide bomber by telling him the vest he was wearing “would spray flowers” when he pressed the detonator. Afghan President Hamid Karzai pardoned a 14-year-old boy caught wearing a suicide vest on his way to assassinate a provincial governor. The boy had crossed the border from Pakistan and intended to kill Arsala Jamal, governor of Khost province. July 2007Source: RFE/RL .

The Taliban tried to trick six-year-old Juma Gul into being a suicide bomber by telling him the vest he was wearing “would spray flowers” when he pressed the detonator. When he realized it was a bomb, Juma notified Afghan soldiers. June 2007 Source: Telegraph .

A 15 year old al-Qaida suicide bomber helped drive a truck loaded with explosives into a military barracks in the eastern Algerian city of Dellys in an attack that killed 30 people and injured 47. September 2007 Source: Monsters and Critics .

Ahmad al Shayea, from Saudi Arabia, was tricked into becoming a suicide bomber by al-Qaida when they asked him to deliver a tanker truck, which they had rigged with a bomb to explode outside the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad in 2004. He survived, but was badly burned and has since renounced terrorism and returned to Saudi Arabia. Today he works to convince would-be terrorists to give up their deadly ways. July 2007 Source: MSNBC .

Terrorists used a handicapped child as one of the suicide bombers who launched attacks on voters in Baghdad on Election Day. January 2005 Source: MSNBC .

In his first public speech, the Director-General of MI5, Jonathan Evans, states that al-Qaida is actively recruiting kids as young as 15 years old for suicide missions in the UK.

Read his full speech.

al-Gaeda young recruits Johnathan Evans State Department counter terror office