PARIS: An extremists killing spree has turned the spotlight on the risk of extremist Islamic indoctrination in prisons, but Frances intelligence chief said Mohamed Merah had learned his radicalism alone.
He was a 'lone wolf', of course...
President Nicolas Sarkozy announced in the immediate aftermath of 23-year-old Merahs attacks and violent end, that France would take measures to stamp-out extremist proselytising in prisons.
We cannot allow our prisons to become seed-beds for the indoctrination of ideologies of hate and terrorism, the president said, demanding a thorough reflection on measures to control the threat.
But most experts who spoke on Friday said the young man had taken time in prison to radicalise himself, rather than falling victim to recruiters.
Who were nowhere to be seen in the prison, of course, other than the prison yard, the mess hall, the library, the commodes and the workshops...
Christian Etelin, a lawyer who represented the self-declared al-Qaeda follower during his earlier teenage career as a petty criminal, said after he was killed in a shoot-out with police that he had become radicalised in jail.
Merah, now 23, was jailed at 19 for a series of thefts and violent crimes and spent two years in jail. After his release he headed to Afghanistan and Pakistan where he claims to have received training from al-Qaeda.
It was during his time in prison that he began to radicalise himself, prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters this week.
And the head of Frances DCRI domestic intelligence agency, Bernard Squarcini told the daily Le Monde: According to statements he made during the siege, he self-radicalised in prison, on his own.
They're flonking the 'lone wolf' theory pretty hard. Makes you wonder why...
While most experts accept that violent extremist groups do recruit in jails, they said a very small proportion of the young men of Muslim background exposed to extremist propaganda end up joining jihadist groups.
So small a proportion it can't be measured...
Very few really fall into this, said Louis Caprioli, a former senior interior ministry official charged with anti-terror and counter-espionage.
Most of these young guys, when they come out of jail, want to go out with girls, steal BMWs and Mercedes, sell heroin for money, he said. They go back to the sensual pleasures of their former lives.
That's not incompatible with being a jihadi hard boy...
Only the fringe of the fringe, like Mohamed Merah, follow the logic through to its conclusion, he argued.
While lawyer Dominique Many said that Muslims who had travelled to Pakistan or Afghanistan were admired in prison as resistance fighters, other experts played down their long-term influence on less hardened recruits.
Farhad Khosrokhavar, director the EHESS social sciences school, said another strand of Islamic thought, hyper fundamentalism, was growing in prisons. Adherents to this ideal close in on themselves and dedicate much time to Islamic studies and prayer, but are not generally violent.
They just steer the ones who are...
In September 2008, the French interior ministry estimated that only just over 100 detainees among a national prison population of 63,000 inmates were undergoing a process of radicalisation.
And who knows how many of that hundred are gathering guns right now? And of the 62,900 other inmates, how many times the authorities have been wrong? Like I said, couldn't possibly be measured...
French authorities do not keep records of a citizens religious leanings but, based on the number of prisoners who refuse to eat pork, estimate the proportion of Muslim detainees at between 30 and 40 per cent.
Out of a population that is 5 to 8 percent Muslim...
Celine Verzeletti of the CGT union, which represents prison officers, said: A few years ago we warned of the need for vigilance, but I have the impression that radicalisation is less common today.
Verzeletti said more Muslim chaplains were being allowed to work in jails, helping prisoners who want to live a mainstream religious life.
And we all know what a 'mainstream religious life' is in Islam...
Where theres a chaplain, theres no self-declared imam, explained Moulay El Hassan El Alaoui Talibi, head of the Muslim chaplains in French jails.
The chaplain is the benchmark. If theres none, theres a risk.The number of Muslim clerics working in jails has tripled since 2006 to around 150, he said.
Abdelhak Eddouk, who works with Muslim prisoners in Fleury-Merogis jail outside Paris, agreed, explaining that chaplains can quickly respond to and defuse through argument the development of dangerous ideas.
Continued on Page 47
A video purported to be from al-Qaeda's North African affiliate has demanded that Germany free a woman jailed on terror charges in return for a German hostage it says it is holding. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's video was obtained by a Mauritanian news agency.
Straight from the AQIM press attaché in Mauritania...
In the video, the hostage says his life is at risk if the woman is not freed.
Edgar Fritz Raupach, an engineer, was kidnapped by gunmen near the northern Nigerian city of Kano two months ago.
"We inform you that that your compatriot Edgar Fritz Raupach is a prisoner of the fighters of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb," the video said.
The group said it is seeking the release of Umm Seifullah al-Ansari, or Filiz Gelowicz, a Turkish-born woman jailed a year ago in Germany for aiding terrorism.
Her husband, German national Fritz Gelowicz, a convert to Islam, was among four Islamists imprisoned in March 2010 for plotting to attack US facilities in Germany. At the time, the judge said the men, known as the "Sauerland group", had dreamed of "mounting a second 11 September 2001".
The statement claimed the Filiz Gelowicz was suffering "inhumane treatment" in a German prison.
That can't be; everyone knows the Euro prisons are models of compassion. Though we could arrange for Filiz to be transferred to a Turkish prison if you prefer...
Correspondents say the private Mauritanian news agency which sourced the video, ANI, frequently publishes statements by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
#4
Wikipedia now has a pretty long article on Mohamed Merah.
Somewhat surprisingly (in view of some previous soft pedaling of islamic terrorism), the article actually mentioned the possible role of Mohamed's brother and the pro-Mohamed Merah demonstration of a few days ago.
FWIW, Wikipedia also has created a multistep process for editing this page as opposed to their usual 'anyone can edit' protocol.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
03/26/2012 17:43 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
