RadicalizationFrance faces up to problem of Islamist radicalization in prisons

Since this month’s Paris attacks, counterterrorism officials have focused their attention on French prisons where, they believe, a significant number of the country’s extremists adopted their radical Islamist ideology.

It was at the Fleury-Merogis prison — roughly fifteen miles from the Eiffel Tower — where Amedy Coulibaly, who was killed during his siege at a Paris kosher supermarket earlier this month, served a prison sentence alongside Chérif Kouachi, one of the brothers who killed twelve people at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo. While at Fleury-Merogis, Coulibaly also met Djamel Beghal, a French Algerian inmate who was serving time for plotting to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris in 2011.

Authorities have identified a connection between young French Muslims sent to prison and the radicals who plot attacks or wage jihad. “A lot of my clients were radicalized in prison,” said Dominique Many, a defense lawyer in the 2005 case in which Kouachi and others were convicted of attempting to travel to Iraq to wage jihad. “They are very well organized,” Many said. “They know how to protect the weak to draw them into the system. They say you’re their family, and then you’re trapped.”

Extremists often find it easier to spread violent ideology in prison than outside of prison. Most prisoners spend up to nine hours a day together working and later in the prison yard, with minimal supervision. Prison guards, who say they find it difficult to spot extremists, are each typically responsible for 100 prisoners. “They adapt faster than we do,” said David Dulondel, a guard and union leader at the Fleury-Merogis prison. “We don’t have anyone trained for anti-radicalization,” he said. “As it is today, we can’t say whether someone is in the process of radicalizing or not.”

“The number of people who work on intelligence within prisons is peanuts,” said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist at Paris’s School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, who has studied prison radicalization. He adds that the most dangerous prisoners are hard to spot by guards and they often blend in. “Most of the people who get radicalized in prison know very well they should not let their beards grow, should not go to collective Friday prayer when it exists,” Khosrokhavar said.

Former prison inmates, imams, and guards describe Fleury-Merogis as a training ground for new radicals. The Washington Post reports that French authorities earlier this week raided eighty prison cells of suspected Islamic extremists and found cellphones, USB drives, and other contraband. Hundreds of French prisoners are a potential threat, authorities say. Last week, French prime minister Manuel Valls promised to double the budgets of prison anti-radicalization efforts and to hire sixty more Muslim chaplains in the nation’s prisons.

Critics, however, say such efforts are minuscule compared with the scope of the problem. Only 170 imams are currently ministering inside French prisons. The number is low considering that Muslims make up more than half of the country’s 68,000 inmates. They also note that the dozens of people sent to jail after the Paris attacks for verbally supporting terrorism, may contribute to the problem. “Prison destroys men,” said Mohamed Boina M’Koubou, an imam at the Fleury-Merogis prison. “There are people who are easy targets to spot and make into killers.”

Once radicalized in prison, former prisoners often find it difficult to function in society. “When you’re in jail for ten years and in contact with such people, it’s very difficult to come out and turn things around,” said Myriam Benraad of the Paris university Sciences Po, and an expert on militant movements. The French government has also identified the problem and called radicalized prisoners, once released, “time bombs,” according to a 2005 government report on the subject.

Speaking to French police in 2010 before his conviction later that year for trying to help Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, the planner of the 1995 Paris Metro bombings, escape from prison, Coulibaly said that he met “terrorists” during his previous times in prison. “If you want me to name all the terrorists I know, it will take you a while. I know them all —the Chechens, the Afghans.” “I knew them back in prison, but that doesn’t mean I still see them now,” he said.

Coulibaly, however, would go on to take part in the bloodiest terrorist attack France has seen in decades.