Footage from within Islamic State attack cell yields secrets

A French Islamic State cell dismantled in the final stages of planning an attack has yielded a new secret this week, with the release of undercover footage showing how a group of disaffected petty criminals transformed into a terror network.
Filmed by a young French Muslim journalist who infiltrated the group with a hidden camera, the Canal Plus documentary takes an extraordinary inside look at the group, which called itself the Soldiers of Allah.
The cell was nominally led by a young ex-convict who called himself Abu Oussama, who speaks dreamily about his coming death, the palace that awaits him in paradise, the winged horse made of gold and rubies, and the women: "I'm not making this up, I swear," he breathes.

"I got the feeling they're beyond saving. The programming is so well done, if you will, that you can only be their enemy. There is no discussing with them," according to the journalist, who took the pseudonym Said Ramzy in the credits and was known to the jihadis as Abu Hamza.
Ramzy told The Associated Press the cell was actually directed by a Frenchman sent home from Syria by the extremist organisation to plot an attack.
Remzy was considered valuable because, unlike the other members of the cell, he had no criminal past and had never been identified as a radical.

Abu Oussama had been flagged to police by his father, detained in Turkey trying to reach Syria, and imprisoned in France for five months until authorities determined he was no longer a danger, he tells Ramzy.

"They said since I was deradicalized, since I was quiet ..." he says, giggling toward the camera he cannot see. "It's all part of the ruse, brother."
Oussama appears to trust Ramzy, but not all of the cell's nine members had the same faith. One, who went by the name Joseph, warns Ramzy once that he's been found out, without ever explaining. The others ignore the warning, apparently even after all but Ramzy and the Islamic State fighter sent from Syria were rounded up.

"It's just you and me," the man writes in a message to Ramzy as he prepares to hand over a second set of instructions via a mysterious veiled woman who meets the journalist at a school to deliver the envelope.
Islamic State carefully controls its public image via a sophisticated propaganda apparatus and, in at least one case, allowing a crew to film its members in Syria under specifically vetted conditions.
A second journalist involved in the documentary, who went by the name Marc Armone, said he and Ramzy wanted to get past an edited version of Islamic State and into the minds of its European recruits.