Saleh had been an aide to Syria’s Al Qaeda leader. He claimed that he’d discarded his ideology, along with his nom de guerre; that Europe had taught him to live and let live; that he wasn’t a threat.

“I have no problem now with all of these people walking in the street,” he said. “Before, when I first became a Salafi jihadi, I had a problem with everyone who wasn’t like me. It was planted in me — why is this woman not in a hijab? Why is this woman in heavy makeup? But I am not a god to hold people accountable. If I consider things wrong, I learned that I should not do them, but others can do as they please. What I’ve seen here in Europe, of the kuffar, as we used to call them, I’ve met people who are so much better than the people I met in jihad. They mind their own business and are respectful of others.”

But did he mean it? Could a man like that really change? Were his old extremist ideas merely dormant, awaiting activation? He spoke with sincerity, but could Saleh really assimilate into a society he’d once despised? Was he a threat to Europe, or is redemption possible, even for a man like him?

He had entered the world of Salafi jihadism in his late teens, exposed to the banned writings of Islamist leaders before he was detained by the Syrian regime, just shy of his 19th birthday. He didn’t even pray regularly, let alone consider himself an Islamist, before he was imprisoned. “I was a kid,” he said, jailed with Qaeda members. The prison, he said, “made me what I became.” A six-year “sleep” (in prisoner parlance) ended when the regime opened his cell door in April 2011, releasing him with no formal charge as part of an amnesty.

With Syria in the throes of revolution, he formally joined his freed cellmates in Al Qaeda. “Ten years of my life like this,” he said. “I haven’t lived a normal day. You know what I do now? I work in a restaurant. I clean tables after customers. I wipe them down. That’s my job and I’m happy doing it. When I wipe a table, I feel normal, like this is what a normal person might do.” It was also one of the few jobs he could get. “What was I going to put on my C.V., that I’d graduated from a sniper training course?”

He had European friends who surprised him with the kindness they showed a Syrian refugee. His former Nusra Front colleagues didn’t know where he was. He avoided Syrians and other Arabs, lest they learn his background. Only his family knew his whereabouts. He had once been an “amni,” a security agent, tasked with finding and surveilling Al Qaeda’s enemies and defectors in Turkey — men like him. He knew what might happen if an amni found him. He didn’t dwell on it, although he had trouble sleeping, sometimes for days.