Category: Europe

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Damned if They Do, Damned if They Don’t: The Gordian Knot of Europe’s Jihadi Homecoming
By Zach Goldberg
Introduction
The homecoming of Europe’s jihadi volunteers (or émigrés) from Syria remains an enduring source of public disquiet. That battle-hardened and radicalized Muslim-European passport holders would return to leverage acquired “skills” at home is a specter haunting law enforcement across the continent. A recent discovery by French police of some 1000+ grams of explosives, nails and bolts in the apartment of a recently repatriated Jihadi émigré, did little to assuage such concerns.
Understandably, many European governments are throwing down the gauntlet on returning and hopeful émigrés, as well as their facilitators. Britain’s head of counter-terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service, for instance, has threatened to deal “robustly” with any such individuals, threatening sentences of life-imprisonment and/or revoking their citizenships. Other countries have followed suit. In October, Holland established a legal precedent when it convicted and sentenced a would-be 22 year old émigré–publicly identified as ‘Omar H’–to a year in prison on charges of planning “arson or explosions” and adhering to “Jihadist ideas.” And most recently, in March, a French court slapped prison sentences ranging from 2-5 years on three Muslim citizens—previously arrested trying to board a plane for Turkey—for “criminal association with the intent to commit terrorist acts.”
On the face of it, the crackdown is common sense: better to take prospective ‘ticking time-bombs’ off the street than leave tragedy to chance. Unfortunately, the infusion of global jihadis into a European prison system teeming with Muslims may create medium to longer-term issues.
‘Prison Emirates’: Appraising the Problem
Prior to his 4-month jail sentence for car theft, an 18-year old French-Algerian Khalid Kelkal did not “know how to write and read Arabic.” Once behind bars, Khalid affirmed to himself: “I must not waste my time. There was a Muslim Brother with us…I learned Arabic fast.” Khalid quickly found his niche among the “tight-knit group” of Muslim cellmates. It was like he experienced a “great opening of the spirit.”
In 1995 that charm revealed its true colors when Khalid was convicted both for the murder of a moderate Muslim cleric as well as the attempted bombing of a high-speed rail link between Paris and Lyon.
The extent of prisoner radicalization in Europe is certainly debatable. Like any other terrorism related issue, the discourse has its share of alarmists and skeptics. But regardless of one’s stance, it’s important not to equate radicalism with terrorism; the two aren’t invariably synonymous. Radicalism is certainly a sine qua non for terrorism—yet it need not express itself as such. Beliefs don’t always manifest themselves through acts of terrorism.
Thus, assessing the scope of prisoner radicalization is a muddy undertaking. One can very well ‘radicalize’ in prison and—though he/she may periodically contribute to dubious Islamic ‘charities’– go on to live a virtually ‘non-violent’ lifestyle. Moreover, as was the case of Muslim-convert and failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid, one can also have his/her initial religious exposure in prison and only after (perhaps even years later) gravitate towards the realm of extremism.
That said, Islam—particularly its extremist iteration—is a growing fixture in many European prisons. In the UK, despite constituting just 4.7% of the population, Muslim inmates have doubled to nearly 12,000 in the past decade and now represent 14% of the custodial population. The situation in France, where that figure is estimated to range between a whopping 70-80%, is even worse. This phenomenon is, to varying degrees, the rule rather than the exception throughout much of Europe (see chart below). And considering that Islam has become “the fastest growing religion among prisoners in Europe,” non-Muslims going in may be Muslims going out.
The etiology of the above is complicated and cannot be thoroughly articulated in brief. Suffice it to say that Europe’s Muslim youth are beset by a host of social, cultural, and economic barriers that render lives of crime a seductive alternative. Unable to obtain meaning or purpose in their lives, they chase a transient, impish fix (i.e. drugs, theft, gangs) to numb the pain. When confined to a cell, however, that emptiness has nowhere to hide. With plenty of time to brood over their ontological vacuums, they long for a way to fill it. And Islam, with the brotherly endearment and communal belonging it bestows, is a potent filler.
In and of itself, the preponderance of Islamic embrace in prisons is innocuous—if not beneficent. In fact, one studyof Muslim converts in British penitentiaries found that Islamic faith provides inmates “with a moral framework from which to rebuild their lives,” while instilling a self-imposed discipline that, in turn, “gives prison authorities a convenient force in helping them maintain order.” However, given the hermeneutical nescience of these religious neophytes (as in the case above), the risk they’ll fall under the sway of pseudo-‘Sheikhs’ and those proselytizing a more radical Islamic persuasion, cannot be ignored.
Admittedly, the overwhelming majority of Muslim inmates won’t see their beliefs consummate through acts of terrorism. However, the adoption of radical creed, at a minimum, nurtures that eventuality. And the more that imbibe ideological chauvinism, the more room the violent ‘minority’ has to grow. As argued below, the increasing ingress of global jihadi veterans into the prison system could play a significant role in mediating such a trend.
Empirical Cases
Among the more notable prison-jihadi examples is Muktar Ibrahim, the leader of the July 21st London Bomb plot who adopted extreme Islamism while in prison for gang related violence in the 1990s. In Spain, prison radicalization proved integral to the hatching of the 2004 Madrid train bombings by a “loosely affiliated cluster of childhood