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No Lone Wolf: Beach Killer In Five-Man Cell

Tunisian mass murderer Seifeddine Rezgui was part of a five-man terror cell operating out of the ancient Islamic city of Kairouan for the last four years, Sky News can reveal.

At least two members of the cell trained and fought in Syria, while Rezgui is believed to have spent four months in Libya at an Islamic State training camp before being sent to attack westerners in Tunisia.

Sky's investigation involves interviews with more than a dozen students and friends of the killer, including one who confirms that Rezgui confessed to him he was an IS member and a jihadist.

Kairouan is one of Islam's most sacred cities with a beautiful old centre full of the hustle and bustle one would expect in in North African Arabic city.

But this is also the home of a university known quite simply by the locals as "Jihadi Uni".

It is here that Rezgui became enrolled in a programme of intense jihadi indoctrination leading to training and ultimately his horrendous terror attack on the beaches of Tunisia's Mediterranean seashore.

Rezgui was noticeably different in behaviour to his other jihadist friends in that he appeared like any other student.

On the face of it he appeared to indulge in drinking and sex with one particular girl; he engaged in conversations and discussions with communist party members and was caught break-dancing on video. A normal guy.

But Sky News has been told it was a front.

He had been groomed in Libyan Islamic State training camps to act like a student so that he would never be spotted and would be free to travel and carry out his murderous attack.

We learned from school friends that the narrative of a man suddenly radicalised and sent to kill over the course of a few months was incorrect.

His relationship with three close friends ended over four years ago after he announced he intended to follow jihad and strict Sharia law. They argued and parted their ways.

Shortly afterwards he disappeared for around four months. During that time he was totally out of contact before reappearing and enrolling for a Masters degree course.

His friends believe that the break was his first training programme, possibly in Libya but more likely in Tunisia's rugged mountains.

In Kirouan's coffee shops we met a string of apparently unrelated people who were witnesses to his behaviour. Their descriptions were identical: an apparently normal young man hanging out with strict jihadists for no apparent reason.

Students and local Imams alike agree that the mosque he attended had been taken over by extremists. He attended radical workshops where the talk was dominated by Jihad in Syria, Iraq and Libya; yet he cultivated the image of a "dude".

Students opposed to radical Islam soon recognised his jihadist credentials but were widely mystified by his apparent double standards. One of them determined to delve deeper; his name is Wassim Bel Adel.

Of all the people we met he was the only one who befriended Rezgui, and it was to him that Rezgui admitted during a series of conversations that he was a jihadist and had joined Islamic State or Daesh, as they are called across the Arab world.

"We started to talk about what happened in Syria and about the various terrorist groups who fight in Syria. From the start he said he supported the terror groups in Syria," Bel Adel told me over coffee.

"In 2011 he was with Al Nusra, then when Daesh started in Syria and Iraq he changed his allegiance and supported Daesh, and he loved everything they stood for," he said.

Over the course of the next few years the men studied in the same classes and, while never close, kept up a relationship.

Rezgui's four closest friends were, according to Bel Adel, much more hardcore.

"I know the group that he was working with; it is a group of terrorists. There are some guys who go to Syria and come back and go on to study in the same university and there are others who go and die in Syria," he explained.

Out of that core group two travelled and fought in Syria, one died there. A third has disappeared and is thought to be in Libya or Syria. A fourth has been arrested by Tunisia's security services and Rezgui is dead.

For the past few years Bel Adel had been convinced that Rezgui would carry out a terror attack.

"He looked like the calmest person in his group but inside he had chosen the ideology and whoever does will be a terrorist - they are a time bomb because when they have chosen to be in a terror group and follow their ideology next time he will do the terrorist act he will kill people,"he said.

He believes that Rezgui was groomed to return and kill westerners by IS handlers during a long period of indoctrination followed by an intense four weeks prior to the attack - four weeks when he disappeared from class.

"He was training in Libya because the terrorist groups find it easy to go to Libya. They will train there and they will come back without any problem and without any problem from the police.

"Their commanders are there in Libya; they have a base and Ansa Sharia support Daesh (IS) and this is why they have the best place to go into Libya and to come back without any problem.

"I am sure the commander told him to disguise himself from the other students. To say he's not a dangerous terrorist or from a terror group. It's a cell system where no group knows what another group is doing. It is just the bosses that connect them," he added.

We can only accept the words, analysis and opinions of Wasim Bel Adel. But the events on that beach would seem to back up his basic position: Rezgui was a long-term terrorist waiting to attack.