'Homegrown' terror risk weighed in breakthrough US study

NEW YORK (AFP) - A 90-page report hailed as the first to measure "homegrown" terror in the United States, has concluded that young Muslim men aged 15-35 are particularly vulnerable to "radicalization."

The New York City Police Department, which released the report Wednesday found that recent plots against the West were the work of "unremarkable" young men inspired by Al-Qaeda.

But civil and Muslim rights groups expressed concern that the report's focus on young Muslim men as vulnerable to being recruited as terrorists would lead to "ethnic profiling."

Police chief Raymond Kelly wrote in a preface to the report that it was vital for his department, whose city is a favored target of terrorists, to understand why someone in the West may set out on a radical course.

"Understanding this trend and the radicalization process in the West that drives 'unremarkable' people to become terrorists is vital for developing effective counterstrategies," Kelly wrote.

The document analyzes foiled and successful terror attacks against the West in recent years, including the strikes on Madrid in March 2004 and London in July 2005.

"Rather than being directed from Al-Qaeda abroad, these plots have been conceptualized and planned by 'unremarkable' local residents/citizens who sought to attack their country of residence, utilizing Al-Qaeda as their inspiration and ideological reference point," the report said.

"Where once we would have defined the initial indicator of the threat at the point where a terrorist or group of terrorists would actually plan an attack, we have now shifted our focus to a much earlier point -- a point where we believe the potential terrorist or group of terrorists begin and progress through a process of radicalization," the report continued.

"The culmination of this process is a terrorist attack," according to the study, which has been delivered to the White House, the CIA, the FBI and the federal Homeland Security Department.

"It is as high a quality of assessment as this country can produce," said David Cohen, the police department's deputy commissioner for intelligence, who headed the CIA's analytical division for nearly five years.

The study has drawn strong objections from civil rights and Muslim groups.

"Whatever one thinks of the analysis contained in the report, its sweeping generalizations and mixing of unrelated elements may serve to cast a pall of suspicion over the entire American Muslim community," Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.

But others said the findings will be of incalculable value in pursuing global terrorism.

US Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, called the report "a breakthrough in our efforts to defend our homeland in the global war with Islamist terrorism."