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In March 2012, a 23-year-old petty criminal named Mohamed Merah went on a shooting spree--a series of three attacks over a period of nine days--in south-west France, killing seven people.
2012年3月，一个名叫穆罕默德-梅拉（Mohamed Merah）的23岁罪犯在法国西南部进行了一次疯狂的枪击，在9天的时间里连续发动了三次袭击，杀死了7人。
Bernard Squarcini, head of the French domestic intelligence service, described Merah as a lone wolf.
法国国内情报局局长伯纳德-斯夸西尼（Bernard Squarcini）将梅拉描述为一匹独狼。
So did the interior ministry spokesman, and, inevitably, many journalists.
内政部发言人也是如此，而且不可避免的是，许多记者也是如此。
A year later, Lee Rigby, an off-duty soldier, was run over and hacked to death in London.
一年后，休班士兵李-瑞格比（Lee Rigby）在伦敦被碾压并砍死。
Once again, the two attackers were dubbed lone wolves by officials and the media.
这两名袭击者再次被官员和媒体称为“独狼”。
So, too, were Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013.
2013年炸毁波士顿马拉松的兄弟Dzhokhar和Tamerlan Tsarnaev也是如此。
The same label has been applied to more recent attackers, including the men who drove vehicles into crowds in Nice and Berlin last year, and in London last week.
同样的标签也适用于最近的袭击者，包括去年在尼斯和柏林以及上周在伦敦开车撞向人群的男子。
One problem facing security services, politicians and the media is that instant analysis is difficult.
安全部门、政治家和媒体面临的一个问题是，即时分析很困难。
It takes months to unravel the truth behind a major, or even minor, terrorist operation.
需要几个月的时间才能揭开一个重大的，甚至是小的恐怖行动背后的真相。
The demand for information from a frightened public, relayed by a febrile news media, is intense.
惊恐的公众对信息的需求，通过火热的新闻媒体转达，是非常强烈的。
People seek quick, familiar explanations.
人们寻求快速、熟悉的解释。
Yet many of the attacks that have been confidently identified as lone-wolf operations have turned out to be nothing of the sort.
然而，许多被自信地认定为独狼行动的袭击，结果却不是这样的。
Very often, terrorists who are initially labelled lone wolves, have active links to established groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaida. Merah, for instance, had recently travelled to Pakistan and been trained, albeit cursorily, by a jihadi group allied with al-Qaida.
很多时候，最初被称为独狼的恐怖分子与伊斯兰国和基地组织等既定组织有着密切的联系，例如，梅拉最近曾前往巴基斯坦，并接受了与基地组织结盟的一个圣战组织的培训，尽管是粗略的培训。
Merah was also linked to a network of local extremists, some of whom went on to carry out attacks in Libya, Iraq and Syria.
梅拉还与一个当地极端分子网络有联系，其中一些人后来在利比亚、伊拉克和叙利亚进行了袭击。
Bernard Cazeneuve, who was then the French interior minister, later agreed that calling Merah a lone wolf had been a mistake.
时任法国内政部长的贝尔纳-卡泽纳夫（Bernard Cazeneuve）后来也承认，称梅拉为独狼是一个错误。
If, in cases such as Merahs, the label of lone wolf is plainly incorrect, there are other, more subtle cases where it is still highly misleading.
如果在梅拉这样的情况下，独狼的标签显然是不正确的，那么在其他更微妙的情况下，它仍然具有高度的误导性。
Another category of attackers, for instance, are those who strike alone, without guidance from formal terrorist organisations, but who have had face-to-face contact with loose networks of people who share extremist beliefs.
例如，另一类袭击者是在没有正式恐怖组织指导的情况下单独行动的人，但他们与拥有极端主义信仰的松散网络有面对面的接触。
The Exeter restaurant bomber, dismissed as an unstable loner, was actually in contact with a circle of local militant sympathisers before his attack.
被认为是不稳定的独行侠的埃克塞特餐厅炸弹袭击者，在袭击前实际上与当地好战分子的一个圈子有联系。
(They have never been identified.)
(他们的身份从未被确认）。
The killers of Lee Rigby had been on the periphery of extremist movements in the UK for years, appearing at rallies of groups such as the now proscribed al-Muhajiroun, run by Anjem Choudary, a preacher convicted of terrorist offences in 2016 who is reported to have inspired up to 100 British militants.
李-瑞格比的凶手多年来一直处于英国极端主义运动的边缘，出现在一些团体的集会上，如现在被禁止的安杰姆-乔达里（Anjem Choudary）所管理的al-Muhajiroun，这位传教士在2016年被判犯有恐怖主义罪行，据说他曾激励过多达100名英国激进分子。
