ISLAM IS THE PERFECT RELIGION FOR CRIMINALS

[NUKE MECCA]

France struggles to fight radical Islam in its jails

By Alexandria Sage
VILLEPINTE, France | Tue May 7, 2013

(Reuters) - In France, the path to radical Islam often begins with a
minor offence that throws a young man into an overcrowded, violent
jail and produces a hardened convert ready for jihad.

With the country on heightened security alert since January when
French troops began fighting al Qaeda-linked Islamists in Mali,
authorities are increasingly worried about home-grown militants
emerging from France's own jails.

But despite government efforts to tackle the problem, conditions
behind bars are still turning young Muslims into easy prey for jhadist
recruiters, according to guards, prison directors, ex-inmates,
chaplains and crime experts interviewed over the last few months by
Reuters.

"I have parents who come to me and say: 'My son went in a dealer and
came out a fundamentalist'," said Hassen Chalghoumi, imam of the
mosque in Drancy, a gritty suburb north of Paris.

Malian Islamists have warned France it is a target for attacks, most
recently in a video that came to light on Tuesday. This has added to
concern in a country which, according to the Europol police agency,
arrested 91 people in 2012 on suspicion of what it categorized as
religiously-inspired terrorism.

These numbers are by far the highest for any European Union country,
although tiny when compared with France's estimated 5 to 6 million
Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom are peaceful, law-abiding
citizens.

France, which has Europe's biggest Muslim population, is not alone.
International studies show that prison radicalization is a problem in
countries ranging from Britain and the United States to Afghanistan.
However, France stands out because over half its inmates are estimated
to be Muslim, many from communities blighted by poverty and
unemployment.

The two ethnic Chechen brothers suspected of last month's Boston
bombings, while not former convicts, further underline the threat
posed by "lone wolf" militants - young men from immigrant communities
acting alone or in small groups who are lured into violent Islam.

One such was Mohamed Merah, who killed four Jews and three soldiers
last year in and around the southern city of Toulouse. This marked the
worst attack on French soil since 1995 bombings on the France's
underground train network by Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA) that
killed eight and wounded scores.

Merah, 23, spent time in jail for violent theft. Another suspected
French Islamist was radicalized behind bars before being shot by
police in October.

In March an Islamist suspect was arrested on accusations of plotting
an imminent bomb attack on French soil. He had spent five months in
jail last year for drugs and theft offences.

"We're faced with an external enemy in Mali, but also an enemy from
within who is the product of radicalization," said Interior Minister
Manuel Valls, who acknowledged that Merah's killing spree had revealed
a serious lapse in intelligence.

"They start as minor delinquents, move into selling drugs, sometimes
do prison time and convert to radical Islam and hate towards the
West," he told local media in February.

"A GOOD SCHOOL"

Noisy, dirty and smelling of garbage, Villepinte is the most crowded
jail in the Paris region, called the "jungle" by guards. France's
prisons watchdog, after a 2009 visit, described its inmates as "young,
undisciplined and totally uncontrollable".

Brawls occur weekly and staff, many of them trainees, live in fear of
attack. In January an optometrist was knifed in the eye with a pair of
scissors.

Absenteeism is sky-high among guards, who say they are overwhelmed by
the daily challenge of keeping order.

"Islamic radicalization is a real curse in most of our prisons,"
Villepinte guard Blaise Gangbazo told Reuters. "But in tough jails
like ours it comes about even more easily. It's a good school."

France's prison population has grown by a third in the past decade,
partly due to policies under conservative governments of handing down
heavy sentences on repeat petty offenders.

No official data exist but sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar says about
half the 67,674 prison population is Muslim, rising to 70 percent in
some urban areas.

This disproportionate ratio of young, disadvantaged Muslims is added
to a toxic mix of overcrowding, overtaxed guards and a lack of
mainstream Muslim chaplains to discourage radicalization.

Vulnerable young men typically arrive in jail, isolated from family
and friends at a time of personal crisis, and become susceptible to
recruitment by radicals. One such case was Karim Mokhtari, who at 18
was jailed for over six years for a botched robbery in which a man was
shot.

While in jail in the northern city of Amiens, he met a soft-spoken
older inmate who consoled him, invited him to pray and encouraged him
to read the Koran in Arabic. "When you arrive in prison you feel
completely abandoned. You get there and you need to find some
strength," said Mokhtari.

"You're seeking hope and when someone holds out a hand, you take it,"
he said. However, in a subsequent encounter the new friend urged him
to "kill the infidels wherever you find them".

"The idea was to go get myself trained and become a violent Jihadist,"
said Mokhtari, adding that the recruiters work on inmates' hostility
to the prison system and to a country where they often have been
unable to find work.

Nearly two decades ago Mokhtari resisted such pressure. Today, aged
35, he works with youth to keep them out of prison and has co-written
a book, "Redemption", about his experiences.

Prison workers say the vast majority of Muslim inmates are not
radicalized. Yet leaked U.S. diplomatic cables from 2005 cite a
warning by French officials that the prisons and poor suburban
neighborhoods were top recruitment areas for radical Islamists, and
refer to a report by French intelligence services describing
radicalized prisoners as "time bombs".

Chaotic jails bear the brunt of overcrowding due to constant arrivals
of uncharged suspects, and in cells or the yard, petty hoodlums
quickly cross paths with serious criminals.

"It's the little guys who bother us the most, because on the inside
they meet the big guys. Then the consequences are bad," said Gangbazo,
the Villepinte guard. "At our level, the guards are powerless against
that."

UNDER THE RADAR

Justice Minister Christiane Taubira warned foreign journalists in
March against overestimating the threat of prison radicalization, but
added it was "certainly worrying".

Asked how authorities were tackling the problem, she cited measures to
transfer inmates found to be proselytising to other jails, aiming to
disrupt any recruitment efforts to radicalism.

This policy helps to control those prisoners already identified as
radical Islamists, but not all recruiters have been convicted under
France's anti-terrorism laws. The task is tougher with inmates serving
terms for unrelated offences who have turned to radical Islam
unnoticed by the authorities.

Untrained staff tend to confuse devout Muslims with potential
radicals, said sociologist Khosrokhavar, author of a 2004 study
commissioned by the Justice Ministry that was the first to highlight
the level of Muslims in French jails.

"The whole attitude to radicalization is outdated," he said. "Those
who become radicals are precisely those who do not show it. It happens
without any kind of external signs like growing one's beard."

Another hurdle is that France's internal prison intelligence unit,
known as EMS-3, has no judicial power, complicating moves to share
information with the DCRI domestic security service.

"We send up a lot of pieces of information when we spot them except
there's not enough information coming down to us from the DCRI," said
Jimmy Delliste, director of the Saint-Etienne jail just outside Lyon.
"That's a real problem."

To make matters worse, the prisons' EMS-3 is controlled by the justice
ministry while the interior ministry directs the DCRI, both with
distinct cultures, hierarchies and goals.

REAL OR FAKE RADICAL?

One way to thwart radical Islam in prison is through prison chaplains
able to counter such messages with moderate teachings, security
experts agree. But here too, France is falling short.

Despite a prison population dominated by Muslims, France has about 160
Muslim chaplains versus 700 Christian ones. Some estimate more than 80
percent of Muslim inmates never see a chaplain, increasing the risk of
falling prey to radicals.

That contrasts with Britain, where about 200 Muslim chaplains address
a Muslim prison population estimated at only a third of France's.

Abdelhak Eddouk, who was chaplain at the Fleury-Merogis jail outside
Paris for nine years before he resigned recently, estimated at least
480 Muslim chaplains are needed, together with a clearer set of
guidelines to help them in their task.

Government plans, by contrast, are to add just 30 this year and next -
a figure Eddouk said was grossly insufficient to allow the chaplains
time to get to know the real radicals and those parroting violent
ideas as a form of protest.

"Either the guy is a real radical, or he's a fake radical," Eddouk
said. "How am I supposed to know? After talking with him for 15
minutes, I can't."

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