"This generation of young kids are far more Internet-focused than guys who are only 10 years older," Sageman said.
Last year, a group of young Internet enthusiasts was charged with unleashing terrorism in the Netherlands: the killing of filmmaker Theo van Gogh and a plot to assassinate politicians. Police captured Jason Walters, 19, in a raid that left him and three officers wounded. His 17-year-old brother was also jailed.
Walters' Internet chats reveal a casual, adolescent cold-bloodedness, according to excerpts published in the Dutch media. A spokesman for the AIVD intelligence service, the leading Dutch anti-terrorism agency, confirmed that the transcripts were authentic.
In an Internet conversation on Sept. 28, 2003, Walters joked about beheading the Dutch prime minister and bragged about a monthlong training session at an Afghan terrorism camp. The son of a Dutch mother and American father said he had fooled his family into thinking he was in Britain.
He urged his chat partner, "Galas03," to join him on a future trip. "They will train you how to use guns," Walters wrote, using the name "Mujaheed." "I can assemble and dismantle a Kalashnikov blindfolded."
"Is shooting difficult?" Galas03 asked.
"No way, man, it is not that hard," Walters responded. "I even had to roll over with a pistol and then shoot and that went all right, praise Allah."
Walters became radicalized at about 16, investigators say. Fellow suspect Samir Azzouz, 18, was equally precocious. Azzouz was first detained in 2002 in Ukraine en route to joining Muslim combatants in Chechnya, AIVD spokesman Vincent van Steen said.
Iraq has become the new Chechnya, a promised land of jihad, for many militants in Europe. The Iraq war played a central role in radicalizing Salah, the fugitive middle-schooler from Paris, and his homeboys, according to interviews with investigators, defense lawyers, youth counselors and friends.
Salah's family declined to be interviewed for this article. French authorities have not made public his last name because of legal restrictions on identifying minors, particularly criminal suspects.
Salah was born in France to a large family of immigrants from Mali. He grew up in Riquet, a neighborhood that seems more hopeful and less grim than the concrete housing projects outside Paris that are bastions of extremist networks.
