On Wednesday, the possible identity of the terrorists’ alleged leader emerged in a series of interviews conducted by the Telegraph. “I saw a white man who was speaking in fluent British English commanding the rest of the attackers,” one woman said.

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Another added: “There was a white man among them; he was commanding them and was shouting now and then. I saw him ordering them to carry out the attacks. He could be heard speaking frequently and at one point he spoke in Arabic, but most of the time in English.”

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A third witness told the Telegraph that “all were commanded by someone who was white.”

The stories, if true, mark the latest example of a Westerner participating in Islamic terrorist attacks and illustrate the sway Islamic militancy has over some young, newly-converted Muslims. From the world’s most wanted woman, Samantha Lewthwaite — a murderous militant who is white, Christian and British — to thousands of Europeans fighting alongside jihadists in Syria, Westerners are turning against their own countries.

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Earlier this month, a young Frenchman named Mehdi Nemmouche, who spent more than a year training in Syria, was charged with a recent shooting at Brussels’s Jewish Museum that left four dead. When he was arrested, his gun was wrapped in a sheet emblazoned with the name of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). “He spent over a year in Syria, where he seems to have joined the ranks of combatant groups, jihadist terrorist groups,” Paris public prosecutor Francois Molis said.

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British Prime Minister David Cameron said Syria has forged an “incipient terrorist threat” that may turn British jihadists against their native land. “I disagree with those people who think [ISIS] is nothing to do with us and if they want to have some sort of extreme Islamist regime in the middle of Iraq it won’t affect us,” Cameron said Wednesday. “It will.”

In the past 18 months, British authorities arrested 65 people on charges of Syria-related jihadist activities, the BBC reported. At least 400 Brits have already traveled to Syria to train with jihadists. “Unfortunately the UK exports more young men to become jihadist in Europe than any other,” Baroness Neville-Jones, a former chair of the British joint-intelligence committee, told BBC. “The intelligence picture is clear. The numbers are there.”

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Look no further than Twitter, where some Western jihadists threaten their home countries. “Attack the state,” British Abu Sumayyah al-Britani wrote earlier this week before his Twitter account was deactivated. “Attack their government institutions financial sectors parliament buildings etc.”

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One London man calling himself “Abu AK47 Al Britani” warns of “bombs.”

The black flag of tawheed will fly ontop of parliament and the whitehouse i swear to you, stay indoors and await the bombs you scummy pagans — Abu AK47 Al Britani (@ItsLJinny) June 16, 2014

Analysts said the threats are serious. “The worldview of ISIS is vehemently anti-Western,” BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner wrote on Wednesday. “It would take just one order from their amir [commander] to send some jihadists back to Britain to carry out an attack.”

Still, it’s unclear how much rhetoric is posturing intended to frighten. “The purpose of terrorism is to strike fear into the hearts of opponents in order to win political concession,” Timothy Furnish wrote in a 2005 Middle East Quarterly article. Modern media allows jihadists to disseminate fear with greater ease than ever.

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But some of militant Islam’s attraction does appear to be rooted in anger about perceived Muslim oppression in the West. On Wednesday, British detectives were investigating the horrific murder of a Muslim university student in Essex. Cops believe she was targeted because of her traditional Islamic dress while she walked alone on a secluded footpath.