EIPA press briefing, 12 November 2020
‘A second wave of Islamist terrorism? Europe on the edge’
With:
YORAM SCHWEITZER is one of the world’s leading experts on international terrorism and jihadist groups. He heads the Institute for National Security Studies’ program on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict, the leading Israeli strategic studies’ think tank.
Both a practitioner and an expert, Schweitzer has spent most of his career as a senior officer in the Israeli military intelligence. Among other positions, he served as a consultant on counter-terror strategies to the Israeli Prime minister’s office and to the Ministry of Defense. He also headed the Counter International Terror Bureau in the Israeli Defense forces and was a member in a Task Force dealing with Israeli MIAs at the Prime Minister’s Office. In the course of his research, Mr. Schweitzer notably interviewed several members of armed terrorist groups and candidates to commit suicide terror attacks. One of his last policy papers deals with the “Salafi-Jihadists and the Coronavirus Pandemic”. His last book is titled: “ISIS: The Islamic State: How Viable Is It?”.
JEAN-CHARLES BRISARD is the Founder and Chairman of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT), a European think-tank created in 2014. He authored several research reports on al-Qaeda and ISIS financing, on the judgment of the French jihadists, and on the al-Qaeda and ISIS networks in Europe. From 2002 until 2010, he served as chief investigator and expert for lawyers representing families of the 9/11 victims. He teaches counterterrorism at the French Institute of Political Studies (IEP). He authored Forbidden Truth: U.S.-taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy And The Failed Hunt For Bin Laden in 2002 and Zarqawi, The New Face of Al-Qaeda in 2005. Born in 1968, Jean-Charles Brisard earns a Master of Advanced Studies in
Public International Law of the Paris University of Law, a Master’s degree in Comparative Law from the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) in Paris, and he studied Diplomacy at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. In 2008, he was appointed as Knight in the French National Order of Merit by President Nicolas Sarkozy.
DR HANS-JAKOB SCHINDLER is the Senior Director of the Counter Extremism Project and works in Berlin and New York. He is a former German security official who until 2018 served as the Coordinator of the ISIL, Al-Qaida and Taliban Monitoring Team of the United Nations Security Council acting as the chief advisor the Council on global counter terrorism sanctions. Between 2005 and 2011 he also worked as the liaison of the security forces and special advisor to the ambassador at the German embassy in Tehran.”
- YORAM SCHWEITZER, one of the world’s leading experts on international terrorism and jihadist groups.
- JEAN-CHARLES BRISARD, Founder and Chairman of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT)
- DR HANS-JAKOB SCHINDLER, Senior Director of the Counter Extremism Project and works in Berlin and New York.
- Q&A