PEOPLE who join terrorist organisations tend to swap their sense of good and evil for the ideology of the cause, according to the US criminal psychologist Mr Roy Aranda.
Mr Aranda told a seminar at yesterday's conference that the typical terrorist "follower" tended to be someone who was isolated and easily influenced.
"They are outcasts of society and joining a group and being in some way solicited or attracted to the group is a way of developing an identity."
He said the average age of a terrorist was 22, and the more vulnerable they were the easier it was to inculcate them.
"For many of these people, when they join they don't immediately shed all their sense of what's right and what's wrong. But as they begin to take on the group value this sense begins to erode."
The original sense of justice is replaced by a sense of "It's okay to do this for the cause," and they will accept anything they are told by a leader figure.
Mr Aranda said he carried out a study of the Puerto Rican terrorist Victor Alvarez, who became involved in the Muslim fundamentalist group responsible for the bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.
Alvarez had been abused as a child and had come to New York to search for his parents.
He developed a drug and alcohol problem, and after contemplating suicide he watched a TV programme about Muslims. So he went to the nearest mosque.
"It could have been a boy scout show that he was watching, but it wasn't," Mr Aranda said. In the Muslim community Alvarez found a new family of people who accepted him.