GUEST POST: 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.”
Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Jihadology – Pros and Cons and Outcomes of Imprisoning Muslims”
