Marc Sageman

Independent Researcher

Dans les systèmes américain et français, les procès en matière de terrorisme présentent de fortes différences. Il existe de nombreuses juridictions différentes et bien que la partie civile ne soit pas impliquée dans un procès pénal, elle dispose d'un recours en réparation dans les affaires civiles. Les procédures pénales fédérales sont contradictoi...

Social networks play a critical role in the formation of criminal and radical groups. However, understanding of these formations relies on difficult to collect data. We present an approach where narrative data from the trial of the 1995 Paris Metro and RER bombings was used to extract actors, places, groups and actions that led to the formation of...

Despite over a decade of government funding and thousands of newcomers to the field of terrorist research, we are no closer to answering the simple question of “What leads a person to turn to political violence?” The state of stagnation with respect to this issue is partly due to the government strategy of funding research without sharing the neces...

The chapter discusses vulnerabilities of al-qa’ida related to ideology, framing, strategic objectives and decision making, and resource mobilization efforts, all of which can be exploited.

Social network visualization has drawn significant attention over recent years. It creates images of social networks that provide investigators with new insights about network structures and helps them to communicate those insights to others. Visualization facilitates the social network analysis. It supports the investigators to discover patterns o...

If the United States were subject to a terrorist nuclear attack, its president would face overwhelming political pressure to respond decisively. A well-prepared response could help both to prevent additional attacks and to bring the perpetrators to justice. An instinctive response could be cataclysmically ineffective, inflicting enormous collateral...

The U.S. strategy for combating international Islamist terrorists must be based on an understanding of the terrorists' behavior and the process of radicalization to violence. This process includes four dimensions: a sense of moral outrage, interpreted in a specific way, which resonates with one's personal experiences, and is channeled through group...

I am compelled to respond to Bruce Hoffman's review essay, "The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism" (May/June 2008), in which he substantially misrepresents my new book, Leaderless Jihad, ignoring all of its main points while making up others that appear nowhere in it. Most serious, Hoffman blatantly misrepresents my position on the status of al Qaeda's...

While the Web has become a worldwide platform for communication, terrorists share their ideology and communicate with members on the “Dark Web”—the reverse side of the Web used by terrorists. Currently, the problems of information overload and difficulty to obtain a comprehensive picture of terrorist activities hinder effective and efficient analys...

Despite its many problems, publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III; American Psychiatric Association, 1980) set the fields of psychiatry and clinical psychology on a solid empirical footing and fostered great advances in epidemiology and in the evaluation of various theories and therapies. But this progress...

Thanks to the internet and the “war on terror”, modern terrorist networks are nothing like the old, and a lot harder to detect, says Marc Sageman

This article highlights initial findings from the authors’ Global Transnational Terrorism (GTT) Project, which began in August 2006. The case study draws on the database work for Southeast Asia and charts the rise of a militant minority within Jemaah Islamiyah, which was directly responsible for a series of attacks from 2000–2005. The important but...

Terrorist and extremist groups and their sympathizers have found a costeffective resource to advance their courses by posting high-impact Websites with short shelf-lives. Because of their evanescent nature, terrorism research communities require unrestrained access to digitally archived Websites to mine their contents and pursue various types of an...

In the post-September 11 world, Al Qaeda is no longer the central organizing force that aids or authorizes terrorist attacks or recruits terrorists. It is now more a source of inspiration for terrorist acts carried out by independent local groups that have branded themselves with the Al Qaeda name. Building on his previous groundbreaking work on th...

If the United States were subject to a terrorist nuclear attack, its president would face overwhelming political pressure to respond decisively. A well-prepared response could help both to prevent additional attacks and to bring the perpetrators to justice. An instinctive response could be cataclysmically ineffective, inflicting enormous collateral...

A Scientific Approach The facts detailed in this briefing are the results of scientific exploration of terror networks and sacred values and their association to political violence. The research is sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFSOR) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Analysis of terrorist social networks is essential for discovering knowledge about the structure of terrorist organizations. Such knowledge is important for developing effective combating strategies against terrorism. Visualization of a network with the support of social network analysis techniques greatly facilitates the inspection of the network...

It is very important for us to understand the functions and structures of terrorist networks to win the battle against terror. However, previous studies of terrorist network structure have generated little actionable results. This is mainly due to the difficulty in collecting and accessing reliable data and the lack of advanced network analysis met...

The Internet which has enabled global businesses to flourish has be- come the very same channel for mushrooming 'terrorist news networks.' Ter- rorist organizations and their sympathizers have found a cost-effective resource to advance their courses by posting high-impact Websites with short shelf-lives. Because of their evanescent nature, terroris...

While the Web has evolved to be a global information platform for anyone to use, terrorists are also using the Web to their own advantages. Many terrorist organizations and their sympathizers are using Web sites and online bulletin boards for propaganda, recruitment and communication purposes. This alternative side of the Web, which we call the Dar...

For decades, a new type of terrorism has been quietly gathering ranks in the world. America's ability to remain oblivious to these new movements ended on September 11, 2001. The Islamist fanatics in the global Salafi jihad (the violent, revivalist social movement of which al Qaeda is a part) target the West, but their operations mercilessly slaught...

Ever since the 9-11 incident, the multidisciplinary field of terrorism has experienced tremendous growth. As the domain has benefited greatly from recent advances in information technologies, more complex and challeng- ing new issues have emerged from numerous counter-terrorism-related research communities as well as governments of all levels. In t...

Unhampered by current ethical standards and human subject committees, H. Bernheim (1889) created a false memory of a horrific traumatic event. Bernheim also demonstrated his subject's willingness to discuss the implanted memory with a representative of the law. Bernheim's work represents the first documented case of an implanted false traumatic mem...

This article examines three types of skills required for effective assessments in the forensic arena. Forensic psychology is the application of scientific psychology to the resolution of legal conflicts. The first skill is knowledge of the legal issues to be addressed. Examples of such issues are criminal responsibility, legal competencies, and lin...

Background thinking for the Madrid terrorism summit has stemmed partly from the 9/11 Commission and Spain's Comisión 11-M. Their presentations fall short on pinpointing the sources of attacks that carry the most risk and how best to respond. Terrorist attacks over the last decades follow a power-law distribution, which anticipates future terrorist...

Terrorists are making use of all possible means, including the vulnerabilities of our information, communication, and transportation systems, to launch fatal attacks. To address the terrorism threats, it is important to trace dynamic evolution, communication, and movement of terrorist groups across different jurisdictions. As suggested by a recent...