Black Box Jihad

What makes someone become a terrorist, or even a suicide bomber? Martin Schäuble explores the lives of two young men who took this path.

Daniel grows up as one of two sons in an affluent German family in the Saarland. Sa'ed comes from Nablus in the Palestinian territories and shares a room with eight siblings. Daniel goes to high school and is crazy about hip hop. Sa'ed drops out of school early to help earn money for the family - they could hardly be more different, and yet they have the same goal: fighting for the Jihad. One of them is arrested - he is a member of the "Sauerland Bombers". The other kills several people in a suicide attack in Israel. If we ask ourselves why these two young men became holy warriors, we will not find one explanation that applies to both of them. Martin Schäuble tries to get as close as possible to them in an attempt to find answers: through parallel biographies, he looks at their lives, drawing on interviews with their parents, relatives, friends and teachers to shed light on their motives and beliefs - it is information which will shock us to the core, yet we need know if we are to understand the genesis of Islamist terrorism.