An extremist’s killing spree has turned the spotlight on the risk of Islamist indoctrination in prisons, but France’s intelligence chief said Mohamed Merah had learned his radicalism alone.
President Nicolas Sarkozy announced in the immediate aftermath of 23-year-old Merah’s 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 Friday said the young man had taken time in prison to radicalise himself, rather than falling victim to recruiters.
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 France’s 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, reading the Koran.
“He said, in any case, everything is in the Koran. So, he was not a member of a network,” he said.
While most experts accept that violent Islamist 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.
“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.
“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.
