In the restive Pakistani province of South Waziristan an Islamist by the name of Abdullah Mehsud commands an estimated 200 fighters. On October 14 Mehsud masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers working on a dam project for a state-run Chinese company and were taken to a mud hut in the Chagmalai area of the province. From the hut, the kidnappers negotiated with Pakistani forces while receiving telephone instructions from Mehsud. The negotiations ended with a Pakistani assault on the hut during which one of the Chinese hostages was killed. Pakistani forces immediately set out to capture Mehsud, previously unknown to the Pakistani government. The name Abdullah Mehsud, however, did ring a bell halfway around the world at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where Mehsud had been an inmate until March 2004.
Elsewhere, halfway between Pakistan and Cuba, in Denmark, a man named Silmane Haj Abd al-Rahmane told Danish national television on September 26 that he considered Danish soldiers and government officials legitimate targets for terrorist attacks. Abd al-Rahmane also said he plans to travel to Chechnya and join the jihad there. Abd al-Rahmane had also been a detainee at Guantanamo and was released to Danish authorities in the beginning of 2004. When asked about the contract he had signed before being released from Guantanamo in which he had committed to refrain from terrorist activities, Abd al-Rahmane answered: “They can use that contract as toilet paper over in the United States”. This kind of rhetoric is not only heard from freed prisoners living in western democracies.
Abdullah Mehsud AP Photo
Shortly before a prisoner exchange between Afghanistan and Pakistan, on September 12, Umara Khan, a Pakistani national who had been jailed in Afghanistan after he had been captured while fighting for the Taliban told a reporter: “I am proud of my decision. I had come to Afghanistan for jihad and I succeeded. I will go to Iraq and continue my jihad against Americans until I defeat them”. In October, Israel Defense Force soldiers arrested Imad al-Kawasme, commander of Hamas in the city of Hebron. Kawasme orchestrated many terrorist attacks including the August 31 suicide attacks on two buses in Beer Sheba. Al-Kawasme had previously been in an Israeli prison between 1994 and 1999. Islamist militants, wholly committed to their ideology, are not reformed by imprisonment.
The fact that Islamist prisoners are repeat offenders is not that surprising when one understands that they are ideological criminals that base their actions on a utopian ideology. Jihad, in their eyes, will eventually lead to a perfect Islamic world, in which Muslims rule by Islamic law. They strongly believe that their actions in support of jihad are not only religiously justified but are in fact a religious duty.
A prison system’s only chance to thwart repeat behavior by criminals of this sort is to either achieve deterrence or alter the offender’s belief in the justification of his actions. Deterrence - making the offender afraid enough of further punishment that he changes his ways - is hard to achieve with a person who deeply believes that he is doing the right thing. It can be effective with people whose belief is not as strong or with people who have more to lose from further punishment. Changing the offender’s belief in the justification of his actions, by for instance changing his view about the radical interpretation of Islam that he has subscribed to would destroy the motive for his crime. Changing a person’s belief, however, is not something incarceration is likely to achieve. Being detained usually creates antagonism towards the authority that is in charge of the prison. Prisons, also, do not make an organized attempt at trying to change the ideological belief of their inhabitants. It is therefore very likely that a person who was incarcerated for a minor offence related to his role in an Islamist movement will again seek a role when he is released.
Another factor that contributes to the likelihood that a person who has been incarcerated for his role in an Islamist organization will return to it is the effects his imprisonment has on mainstream society and on his Islamist organization. Mainstream society will view a person who has been jailed in relation to Islamist terrorism as a dangerous person and there is greater likelihood of further alienation from society. Within the Islamist organization, however, the incarceration usually increases the prisoner’s status. Serving time for adherence to the organization shows a sacrifice for the cause. Former prisoners prefer to return to their organizations with hero status rather than join mainstream society. This is model is not true in places where Islamist terrorism enjoys a good amount of popular support such as the support Hamas receives in parts of the Palestinian Authority. In those places, the former prisoner will enjoy increased status in society as a whole and in his organization.
Richard Reid
As much as recidivism is a problem it is not the only problem with Islamists in prison nor the most severe one. A greater problem is that many Islamists who are detained in prisons across the globe are still capable on the ‘inside’. In fact they make the most out of their stay in prison to strengthen their specific Islamist organization and the Islamist movement as a whole. Islamists in prison have been able to continue planning and directing terrorist attacks, enhance their criminal skills and connections in the criminal world and recruit new members to their movement.
In a hearing before the Spanish parliament, On October 25, 2004, Rafael Gomez Menor, a ranking intelligence official who has been investigating the March 11 terror attack in Madrid, told the members of parliament that the mastermind behind the attack was, “Abu Dahdah, without any doubt”. Abu Dahdah, a Syrian by the name of Imad al-din Barakat Yarkas, is considered the leader of the al-Qaeda cell in Spain and the organizer of the March 2004 attack in Madrid. Abu Dahdah, however, has been in a Spanish prison since 2001 where he is being prosecuted for his role in September 11, 2001. Starting in June 2003, Abu Dahdah was frequently visited in prison by a man called Walid al-Masri. Al-Masri turned out to be the man who rented the property near Madrid where the bombs for the March 11 attack were assembled. Al-Masri’s last visit to Abu Dahdah was on March 6, 2004, five days before the attacks. While they continued to learn about the role Abu Dahdah and al-Masri had in directing the March attack, in October, Spanish anti-terror investigators uncovered a terrorist cell that was planning an attack on the National High Court in Madrid with 1,200 lbs. of explosives. In order to dismantle the cell, on October 18, the investigators visited eight Spanish prisons, searched cells and arrested 10 prisoners. Ten days later, after further inquiry, the investigators returned to two of the prisons and arrested five additional prisoners. While it may not be clear what each man’s role was in preparation for the attack it is clear that Islamist prisoners were still able to play a part in planning and directing terrorist attacks.
Topas Prison
Even when prison does not allow the continuation of actual activity it is a place where Islamists can learn and improve their capabilities for future operations. In prison, Islamists meet other criminals that are experts in fields that can be useful for terrorists such as forgery, weapons and human smuggling, money laundering and more. From Afghanistan to Chechnya through the Philippines, Islamists have shown no reservations about taking part in other illegal activities and financing through criminal enterprise. Because the Islamists are fighting a “holy fight”, almost any activity can be justified if it furthers their goal. The Spanish investigators who broke the cell that was planning to bomb the National Court learned from the prison guards that Said Afif, a ringleader of the Islamist inmates at Topas Prison in the city of Salamanca, had developed a close friendship with Jose Manuel Errazkin Beldarrain, the expert on underground weapons and explosives storage for ETA, the Basque separatist terrorist organization. “They are together in Cell Block Seven and they talk all the time,” recalled a Topas prison guard. “They meet a lot in the yard and chat. You see straight away in a department when there is a relationship which goes beyond friendship.” (El Mundo, 20 October 2004).
Through the friendships they forge, Islamists not only improve their operational capabilities but also strengthen their ranks. After mosques, prisons are probably the most important recruitment centers for Islamists. Across Europe there is a large population of prisoners that are immigrants from Muslim countries. In Spain, according to a report by the prison workers union, 60 percent of new prisoners are foreigners, with Moroccans making up a third of these. In prison, Islamists seek out Muslim men arrested for other offenses. Some of these men are disenfranchised from the host country’s society and are sympathetic to their co-religionists who many times also share their ethnicity and nationality. To these men, who are often petty criminals without much of a future, Islamic extremism is a way to change their lifestyle. Joining the ranks of the Islamists can give them a sense of brotherhood with a larger group of prisoners, a sense of moral superiority and a sense of purpose in life.
Djerba synagogue after the attack.
At Spain’s Topas Prison, where Said Afif was arrested, the Islamists were coercing the rest of the Muslim inmates to follow Islamic law in their daily lives. The message that proposes Islam is a complete solution to all problems and states that hatred of western societies is correct can also be very appealing to non-Muslim prisoners. In the mid 1980s a man by the name of Christian Ganczarski (not a common name for an Islamist) was arrested in Muelheim, Germany for theft and drug trafficking. Ganczarski then converted to Islam in prison and became a fan of Osama bin Laden. Upon his release, he traveled to Afghanistan for training. He went on to be the chief organizer of the terrorist attack on a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia in 2002 that killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists. Another prisoner who converted to Islam in a U.S. jail and became an active terrorist is Richard Ried, the failed shoe bomber, who intended to detonate his bomb on a transatlantic flight. Islamists have been able to strengthen their movement and their ranks and insure that even if they are not released so soon they have operatives that will take their place.
Prisons can try and tackle some of these problems by devising operational procedures for Islamist prisoners. Prison systems should keep track of where Islamist prisoners are kept so they can spread them out as is done at times with those prisoners involved in organized crime. It imay be necessary to maintain surveillance on prisoners known to be senior figures in Islamist organizations. Some Islamist prisoners should have limitations on their visitation rights and other restrictions. Also, Islamists who are released from prison should be subject to travel restrictions. More must be done in order to insure that when a violent Islamist is incarcerated for the protection of society - society is really being protected.
Zohar Neuman is a Research Fellow at JINSA.
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