International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 120

The Release of Jihadists from Prison: Unanswered Questions from the 2000s
S then continued to disseminate his ideology, giving interviews to the local
press, most notably stating that “for Islamists, suicide attacks with an economic
impact are the best way of continuing the fight.” Then, evading the controls imposed
by the courts, he fled to Syria where he became a leader of Jund al-Aqsa, a
jihadist group with close links to the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.
He was eventually killed in a US strike.
B requested asylum in Switzerland, a request that the Swiss authorities refused.
Extradited to France, he was a given a fourteen-month custodial sentence
on June 27, 2017 for having broken the conditions of his house arrest. He will be
released later this year.
Meanwhile, M took to preaching the Salafist doctrine, in particular via a blog
and a series of videos posted on YouTube. His message, while never quite crossing
the line into criminality, identified the numerous enemies of Islam: “Among Islam’s
greatest enemies are the freemasons [ ... ] the Crusaders, [ ... ] the Jews [ ... ], who
have always employed sorcery as a way of diverting and harming believers.”
The labeling and stigmatizing of Muslims as enemy conspirators acts as a
powerful recruiting tool for the Salafists, who also leverage unemployment, dilapidated
neighborhoods, and the Palestinian cause. Immersed in medieval beliefs in
sorcery and a life of religious discipline that is unsustainable in Western society,
the new recruit becomes convinced, for example, that if he speaks to an unbeliever
or looks at a woman, he may be reincarnated as a pig or condemned to burn in
hellfire for all eternity.
Having been an active jihadist, M became a kind of recruiting officer for
the cause. For his followers, his past actions and the numerous articles written
about him confirmed the purity and strength of his commitment. His reputation
could only grow. A belief in sorcery and in the physical incarnation of Evil in the
twenty-first century might seem somewhat amusing until we remember that it is
the promise of salvation from Hell, earned by carrying out attacks on the enemies
of Islam, that drives all those who put themselves forward to be martyrs. It is undoubtedly
that very promise that motivated the murderers who carried out the
attacks on the Bataclan theatre and in the streets of Nice.
From the 1995 Attacks to Ansar al-Fath
SB was tried and sentenced to ten years in prison for his involvement in the
1995 attacks in Paris. Notably, he appears to have been responsible for the
recruitment of Khaled Kelkal, and he was behind the introduction of the
Armed Islamic Group (GIA) networks into Europe.
Following his release from prison in 2003 after a reduction in his sentence,
his network, made up of his former prison mates, went on to help finance the Islamist
cause, particularly the war in Iraq. His Ansar al-Fath (Partisans of Victory)
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