RadicalizationEurope to tackle Jihadist radicalization in prison
The problem of prison radicalization is raising complicated questions for lawmakers and security officials across Europe. One problem: Thousands of Europeans have joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and experts say that if apprehended upon returning home, these jihadists will be interned in European jails and continue their mission of radicalizing others, leading to an intensification of the problem of prison radicalization.
Investigators have learned that two of the three perpetrators of the 7 January terrorist attacks in Paris were mostly radicalized in French prisons, adding to a growing number of Jihadists who were radicalized in prison, forcing government officials to search for a solution.
As Deutsche Welle reports, the problem of prison radicalization is raising complicated questions for lawmakers and security officials across Europe.
Mehdi Nemmouche, who killed four people at a Jewish Museam in Brussels in May of last year, and Mohammed Merah, who killed seven in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012, are two more terrorists who served time in prison or juvenile detention before their attacks. Additionally, thousands of Europeans have joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and experts say that if apprehended upon returning home, these citizens will be interned in European jails and continue their mission of radicalizing others, leading to an intensification of the problem of prison radicalization.
“You saw this in prisons in the new federal states after the fall of the Wall,” said Joachim Kersten, a criminologist at the German Police University in Munster, speaking about right-wing extremist groups in the early 1990’s. “Cells formed that then consolidated these sorts of ideas.”
Further, terrorist groups are working to support prisoners through the “Ansarul Aseer,” an online jihadist portal specifically designed to inform and help prisoners. The information the organization provides includes advice to radicalized prisoners on how to organize themselves, spot infiltrators, and more.
More importantly, security experts say that the very act of being in prison has the psychological effect of making many in the prison population easy to recruit.
“Quite a number of them have drawn attention to themselves with violence, burglary or drug crime,” said Thomas Mucke, a political scientist and founder of the Violence Prevention Network. “It makes them susceptible to simple explanations – you’re in prison because you’re not accepted in this society, because Muslims are being persecuted all over the world.”
Mucke stresses that when young convicts hear for the first time about the meanings of Islam, it should not be coming from extremists.
This is where the solution of adding moderate Muslim clerics to the prison system may combat radicalization.
“If an ideological individual comes into contact with others who are full of hatred and rage, he quickly acquires a kind of following,” adds Husamuddin Meyer, an Islamic priest working in prisons. “If one goes in, six or seven soon come out.”
Meyer and others hope to advance the conversation about increasing the presence of positive and non-radicalized Islam in prisons with European governments, in the hope that this can minimize the circumstances which allow for radicalization and which lead to terrorist attacks such as those which occurred in Paris on 7 January.Paris attacks.
