Prison Jihad

Andrew Bolt thinks imprisonment played a part in the ‘radicalization’ of  Mohammed Merah. It might have been a contributing factor, but in the final analysis its always Islam and nothing but Islam that sends Islamo-zombies on the warpath.

Mohammad Merah trapped 8-year-old Miriam Monsonego in a corner, grabbed her by the hair and then shot her in the head. The concern of French Muslims for Jewish victims of the Toulouse massacre appears to correspond with the threat posed by the identity of the killer to Islam’s reputation. (thanks to the ROP)

Other news:

• Mohammed Merah was on the U.S. No Fly list 

A jihadist who thought shooting unarmed children honored his faith is now shot himself:

In a dramatic end to a 32-hour standoff, a masked French SWAT team slipped into the apartment of an Islamist extremist Thursday, sparking a firefight that ended with the suspect jumping out the window and being shot dead in the head.

Mohamed Merah, 23, was wanted in the deaths of three French paratroopers, three Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi — all killed since March 11 in what Merah reportedly told police was an attempt to “bring France to its knees.”

Of course, easy to be wise now. Is the problem that French security agencies have too many such threats internally, in a nation with 5 million Muslims, to properly monitor them all?

Mohammed Merah was on a US no-fly list, an American official has told CNN, raising further questions about why he was not being more closely monitored. His connections with militants if Afghanistan and Pakistan were apparently enough to set off American alarm bells. One of the major political dangers to Sarkozy is that it emerges French security services missed signs of how dangerous Merah was.

With so much monitoring to do, the question now is whether the law enforcement agencies can afford to make more work for themselves. In particular, should Muslim chaplaincies and conversions in prisons really be encouraged or facilitated?:

Prosecutor Francois Molins says … Merah had told police he was radicalised while in prison, during which time he began reading the Koran.

Another example:

London-born Richard Reid has been sentenced in the United States after admitting trying to blow up a commercial flight using bombs hidden in his shoes… (Reid) served sentences in a number of prisons, including Feltham young offenders’ institution in west London. It was while at Feltham that Reid is said to have converted to Islam.

Another – the so-called “dirty bomber”:

In the United States, Jose Padilla, held by the government on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks, converted to Islam in 1992 while in a Florida jail.

Another:

The arrest of four Muslim ex-convicts in an alleged homegrown terror plot in the Bronx is renewing fears about the spread of Islamic extremism in the nation’s prisons. At least two of the four men suspected of plotting to bomb synagogues and shoot down military airplanes converted to Islam behind bars.

Another:

Muktar Said Ibrahim converted to Islam in a British prison before involvement in the London Underground bombing plot...

Another:

In January 2010, a (US) Senate report warned that up to three dozen Americans that have served time in prison are in Yemen, claiming to be studying Arabic. They were described as “blond-haired, blue-eyed types,” and are suspected of joining Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Another:

Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras was detained and accused of supplying explosives to the authors of the Madrid Attack in March 11, 2004… (and) was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the death of 192 persons… First arrested for minor crimes, then converted and radicalized behind bars.

Another:

Safe Bourada, an Algerian citizen who was involved in the Paris’ terrorist attack in 1995… indoctrinated a dozen of prisoners to Salafism. After their release from prison, they constituted the core of Bourada terrorist cell. 

New South Wales, 2007:

THE NSW Government has launched a prison crackdown on a group of the state’s most dangerous criminals who have converted to Islam.

The targets are held in the highest security jail in Australia, the Super Max facility inside the walls of Goulburn jail, where one in three of the inmates is a Muslim fundamentalist or a convert…

The 37 Super Max inmates, including backpacker serial killer Ivan Milat, have committed 48 murders and are serving combined sentences of 550 years. Now 12 of them claim adherence to Islam and form a close-knit culture in the purpose-built jail within a jail.

Queensland, 2008:

Detective Acting Chief Superintendent John Sheppard said …  some prisoners who converted to fundamentalist strains of Islam, such as Wahabi and Salafist, had been investigated.

“There are probably less than half a dozen in the last three years we have looked at and that was largely because they had a quiet intensity about them and made statements sympathetic to terrorist groups or acts,” said Chief Supt Sheppard, head of the Queensland police security intelligence branch…

Up to 70 prisoners across the Queensland prison and community corrections system have claimed to or have converted to Islam in the past three years. They are all male, mostly housed in the southeast Queensland jails and come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

On the other hand, or not:

INMATES in the UK are converting to Islam in order to gain perks and the protection of powerful Muslim gangs, Britain’s Chief Inspector of Prisons warns today. Dame Ann Owers says that some convicted criminals are taking up the religion in jail to receive benefits only available to practising Muslims.

The number of Muslim prisoners has risen dramatically since the mid-1990s – from 2,513 in 1994, or 5 per cent of the population, to 9,795 in 2008, or 11 per cent. ..

She says that prison staff are suspicious about those practising or converting to the faith and warns that treating Muslim inmates as potential or actual extremists risks radicalising them. The report says: “Many Muslim prisoners stressed the positive and rehabilitative role that Islam played in their lives, and the calm that religious observance could induce in a stressed prison environment.

Despite that kind of hand waving, prison authorities in NSW have already moved to stop extremists from preaching in jail, not least to Aboriginal inmates. More might be needed.