Role of online video tutorials in grooming young extremists revealed in BBC probe

LONDON: The use of online video tutorials is one of the key methods Daesh agents use to recruit and train up young people to carry out terrorist attacks, according to a BBC probe.
In an undercover investigation, BBC reporters pretended to be UK teenagers and contacted recruiters from the terror group who tried to convince them to attack London Bridge and Westminster. The information unearthed by BBC Inside Out London was passed on to security services.
The recruiters communicated with the reporters via secure messaging systems and also directed them to online videos that showed them how to make bombs and fake suicide vests. They claimed that if the attackers wore the vests and were near civilians, the police would not kill them, according to the BBC investigation.
Armed police did shoot the London Bridge terrorists during the June 3 attack despite the fact they were wearing fake vests.
The recruiters also provided the reporters with links to material on the dark web — sites that exist on an encrypted network — that provides information on how to use vehicles as weapons as well as the most effective ways of attacking people with knives, the BBC report said.
The UK security minister Ben Wallace told the BBC: “There was definitely usage of encrypted communicating between planners and terrorists and people that carried out some of those dreadful attacks.
“That I am afraid is common throughout every one of these incidents and there is also a role of watching videos online to either prepare themselves or train themselves. I think that they are both, I am afraid, current occurrences in these terrorist attacks,” he said.