THE ULTIMATE TERRORIST FACTORY Are French Prisons Incubating Extremism? by Scott Sayare

REPORT

THE ULTIMATE TERRORIST FACTORY Are French prisons incubating extremism? By Scott Sayare

n 1995, Kamel Daoudi, a statues in the cliffs at Bamiyan, Itwenty-one-year-old engineer- soaring sixth-century monu- ing student from the suburbs of ments that had been deemed Paris, moved out of his parents’ impermissible idols. This apartment. He had fought with seemed to Daoudi an extrava- his father, an Algerian immi- gant act. “I said to myself, ‘All grant obsessed with the possi- right, have you chosen the bility of his son’s success in right moment to come here?’ ” France, his “acceptance by the He settled in Jalalabad, in system,” in Daoudi’s words. He the east, not far from the Paki- resented his father and, deter- stani border, and joined a small mined to find a different path, but influential Islamist faction took up the ideals of jihad. led, in part, by Beghal. The At a small prayer hall in his group maintained friendly rela- parents’ neighborhood, he met tions with Al Qaeda, but its a group of like-minded men, aims were somewhat different, older Algerians who felt adrift and it remained independent. in their adopted country. “They were very critical of the France seemed to them a place Al Qaeda method, they were of libertine excess, Daoudi said, very critical of big attacks,” and they shared a sense of Daoudi said. “And they had a “having betrayed one’s origins vision that was much more— a bit, one’s values, and of being less violent, let’s say, and more obliged, in order to return to the status possessed a gift for sensing the psycho- strategic.” Beghal’s group ran a grade quo ante, to go twice as far.” Daoudi was logical contours of the people he met. school that was open to both boys and particularly drawn to Djamel Beghal, an He exerted a pleasant force of attraction girls. It also operated a paramilitary avuncular and charismatic man about on almost everyone he encountered, and camp where members learned to han- ten years his senior, whose intellect and was often liked even by those who found dle assault rifles and handguns, but worldly curiosity were, like Daoudi’s, his ideology repugnant. this, according to Daoudi, was “just to paired with an attraction to the stark With his wife and children, Beghal be able to, if necessary, defend your- aesthetic of uncompromising devotion. left France for Afghanistan in late self, defend your children, your wife. It Beghal was handsome, with full lips, 2000. Daoudi followed five months was really derisory.” For most of the green eyes that squinted when he smiled, later. He went “out of curiosity,” he now four months he spent in Afghanistan, and a heavy jaw that lent him the im- says, to judge with his own eyes the he slept at the camp. posing air of an athlete. Like a spy, he merits of a society governed by Islamic Daoudi was charmed by the warmth law. On arrival he was told that the of the Afghans he encountered, but he Scott Sayare is a journalist based in Paris. Taliban had dynamited the Buddha found the country to be in many ways

Djamel Beghal, a collage by Anonymous REPORT 53 a disappointment. The Taliban whipped day, he pedals a mountain bike to sign like him. Daoudi laughs and smiles beggars in the street. Almost everyone in at the local gendarmerie—he is not readily and is popular in Carmaux, was illiterate; he once spoke with a man permitted to drive a car. where he jokes with shopkeepers and who maintained that the earth was flat. Daoudi speaks a rapid, meticulous- struggles breathily through an out- A few months after his arrival, the ly formal French that suggests a slight- door exercise class with a group of Taliban ordered Beghal’s camp closed, ly nervous mistrust. As a prisoner he local men and women. He is renovat- and Daoudi worried he might be forced was considered volatile, a tall and ing an old farmhouse with a red-tile to join a Taliban offensive. In August powerful attacker of prison guards. He roof. When asked about his life in the 2001, he returned to France. served several additional months of town, he cited Candide: “Let’s culti- When the attacks of September 11 prison time for disruptive behavior. vate our garden.” came, Daoudi immediately recognized them for what they were; in Afghanistan, there had been talk of a major operation of some kind. Fear- ing arrest in the panic that followed, he fled to the United Kingdom. Five days later, he awoke with perhaps a dozen guns pointed at him. A man assigned to check him for traces of explosives was so afraid, his hands shook. “I felt bad,” Daoudi said. “I said to him, ‘Relax, sir. I’m going to be very cooperative, and I’m going to do ex- actly what you ask. Don’t worry.’ ” Daoudi was charged with participating in an alleged Al Qaeda plot to bomb the American Embassy in Paris. The ringleader of the operation, according to the French authorities, was Beghal, who had been arrested in July. Daoudi denies involvement in or knowledge of any such plot; several years of investigation produced no material evidence that one existed. He and Beghal were convicted nonetheless, under a broad and controversial antiterror statute known as association de malfaiteurs terroriste, or, loosely, “terrorist criminal association.” For the major- ity of Daoudi’s seven years in prison, he was held in solitary confinement; during transfers to court or among prisons, he was escorted by a team of masked police commandos. Daoudi is now forty-one. He lives in Carmaux, an unremarkable town in France’s rural southwest, with his wife and three young children. He did not choose the location. After he com- pleted his prison term, in 2008, a French court ordered his deportation He is pudgy now, and a bit gawky in Beghal was released from prison in to Algeria; the European Court of Hu- his movements, but he carries about 2009. The French attempted to deport man Rights blocked the order on the him a hint of anger delicately con- him; his expulsion was blocked; and he grounds that, as an Islamist terror sus- tained. He has a disconcerting air of was placed under house arrest in Mu- pect, he was likely to be tortured in his detachment, as if he were feigning rat, an isolated township in the French native country. Eight years later, he inattention in anticipation of pounc- interior. Shortly after his arrival, he remains under a form of house arrest, ing; it is easy to detect in him what began to receive visitors—young and is required to keep within the seems to be the confirmation of all friends from prison and Islamists with Carmaux city limits. Three times a one’s doubts or fears. It is also easy to heavy beards. Daoudi, who found Be-

54 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JANUARY 2016 Fleury-Mérogis Prison, by Anonymous ghal “a bit irresponsible,” urged him to into contact with him could not have mind racing. He had a close relation- put an end to the visits. “This wasn’t helped but become more radicalized.” ship with his paternal uncle, who di- helping matters for him,” Daoudi said. Daoudi says that he detected a shift rected his nephew to strengthen his Is- Among Beghal’s callers were Chérif in his friend after his imprisonment. “I lamic faith as a way to cure his Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, two had a hard time going along with Be- anxiety. The uncle died at the age of gruff but childlike men in their twenties. ghal afterward.” Beghal seemed, at forty, as a consequence, according to Every few weeks, they drove the 300 times, to have grown vengeful. “If you Beghal, of the torture he had under- miles from Paris to Murat, where they look back at his story, at his path, he did gone several years earlier at the hands hiked and joked with him for several days almost eight and a half years for the first of the French. When Beghal was a before returning north. In May 2010, a case. He gets out, he’s placed under teenager, the leadership of the Algeri- year after his release from prison, Beghal, house arrest for about a year. And then an regime cracked down on Islamists his young friends, and several other men he goes down again for a bogus affair,” throughout the country. were arrested in a series of dawn raids Daoudi said. “That’s the ultimate ter- “It was then that I chose my camp across France. They were accused of rorist factory. How do you radicalize with a profound conviction,” he wrote plotting to break another Islamist from someone? Well, there you go.” in one of a series of letters that he prison. In 2013, Beghal was once again Still, he does not believe that Beghal sent me from his cell in western found guilty of association de malfaiteurs had any involvement in the Hebdo kill- France. “I chose the party of Allah terroriste, and he was sentenced to ten ings. “Honestly, I don’t think he ma- (God) Most High and rejected any more years in prison. Coulibaly was nipulated them, or that he used them, other party or philosophy of man, given five years but was released in where, incidentally, I could have March 2014. Kouachi was never tried. excelled.” Beghal’s letters—226 Early on January 7, 2015, in Paris, “A NYONE WHO CAME INTO pages in all, written longhand on Kouachi and his brother, Saïd, sheets of graph paper—are often stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, CONTACT WITH BEGHAL COULD boastful: the current of his words a satirical newspaper that had been NOT HAVE HELPED BUT BECOME seems always to convey him back designated a target by Al Qaeda for to a posture of outrage and trium- its cartoons depicting the Prophet MORE RADICALIZED” phalism. He is occasionally funny, Mohammed. They killed twelve though, and at times, especially people. On the following morning, when writing about his childhood, Coulibaly murdered a policewoman and or that he led them to do anything.” At his tone turns lyrical and nostalgic. blew a hole through a man’s jaw; a day most, Daoudi suggested, Beghal per- He arrived in France in 1987. A sister, later, he killed four people at a kosher haps served as a “moral guarantee,” Sakina, had already settled in the sub- supermarket. In a video released after his telling Coulibaly and the Kouachis urbs of Paris, where she cared for a young death, he pledged allegiance to the ca- that their plans were religiously permis- Breton girl named Sylvie Gueguen. Be- liph of the Islamic State. The first sible. In his Afghan period, Daoudi ghal joined his sister, Gueguen con- French air strikes against the Islamic said, “Beghal wasn’t thinking that way. verted, and she and Beghal were married State had begun four months earlier, in I knew him well enough to be able to in 1990. September 2014. In November 2015, say that.” He allowed, though, that The couple lived in a ground-floor after terrorists attacked the Stade de perhaps his friend had changed. “We’re apartment at L’Ermitage, a boxy public- France, the Bataclan concert hall, and never a hundred percent sure—we housing complex outside Paris, and had several cafés in Paris, Daoudi told me don’t even know ourselves completely. two sons. Beghal was clean-shaven, and that those aerial bombing campaigns How can we claim to know he dressed in European clothing. He had made France “much more visible, someone else?” chatted with other parents as they wait- and thus a preferred target.” ed outside the local nursery school. “He In the week following the Hebdo eghal was born in 1965 in was a calm guy, smiling, kindly—‘Hello, killings, Beghal’s prison cell was BKabylia, a mountainous Berber region sir; hello, ma’am,’ ” a former neighbor searched five times. Le Figaro affirmed in northern Algeria, to a family of recalled. He worked small jobs and that he kept up “a relationship of per- means and erudition. His father had devoted most of his time to the practice petual domination” over Kouachi and fought the French in the war of inde- of Islam. Coulibaly, “disciples” who were in his pendence, but he looked on the pride The mid-1990s were an inauspi- thrall. The Washington Post posited and pageantry of other former fighters cious moment for this pursuit. In re- that Beghal might have arranged the with scorn. He was an administrator taliation for France’s support of the apparent collaboration of Al Qaeda at the state railroad and a tutor to anti-Islamist military junta in Algeria, and the Islamic State, a joining of ri- dozens of young students from the guerrillas had begun to select French vals that “would be a worrisome devel- surrounding area. Beghal’s mother, a targets for hijackings, kidnappings, opment in the fight against global ter- strong-willed nurse whom he called and killings. In July 1995, a bomb rorism.” Louis Caprioli, a former senior “the panther,” cared for dying patients exploded on an underground com- counterterrorism official for the French at the family’s villa. muter train in central Paris. Eight government, described Beghal to Re- Beghal was an anxious child. He of- passengers were killed, and 117 people uters as a “sorcerer”: “Anyone who came ten lay awake through the night, his were wounded. The bombing was the

REPORT 55 first of six that year, not counting two director for counterterrorism at the whose group, Jamaat al-Tawhid failed attempts and several more that DST, France’s domestic-intelligence ser- wal-Jihad, came to be known, in a later were averted, the authorities said, just vice. The DST tapped Beghal’s phones incarnation, as the Islamic State. “His in time. and watched him closely whenever he beautiful voice at dawn prayers still The French rounded up hundreds of was in France; in England, he was mon- resounds in my auditory memory,” he exiled Algerian Islamists and suspected itored by the British services. wrote. The man with whom Beghal and opponents of the Algerian regime. Abu Qatada urged his followers to his family shared a home, a Tunisian These mass arrests were of questionable move to Afghanistan, which he de- known as Abu Iyadh, also went on to legality and resulted in no more than a scribed as the foundation of an Islamic violent renown; in recent years, he was handful of terrorism convictions, but restoration. When Beghal, his wife, and considered the most wanted man in they did much to anger Muslims in their three children arrived in Jalalabad, Tunisia. He was reportedly killed last France. Beghal was arrested in summer in an American air strike 1996, in connection with an alleged in Libya. support network for Algerian fight- Beghal said that he resisted the ers, and held for ten hours. No idea of planning international at- charges were brought, but French tacks. “My opinion was: instead of intelligence began to track him. lusting after the conquest of our Shortly thereafter he moved his countries of origin, still unattain- family to Leicester, in the dreary able, let’s rebuild the attained— English Midlands. (Daoudi moved Afghanistan,” he wrote. “This is into Beghal’s apartment outside logical, simple, and a bit naïve, I Paris.) “French politics had cre- acknowledge.” He declined to say ated an atmosphere ever more op- whether he had ever met bin Laden pressive and mistrustful,” Beghal but hailed him as a hero of Islam: wrote to me. “We could no longer “Hate him if you will, but acknowl- make religious concessions.” edge his sincerity,” he wrote. England had become a hub for By the summer of 2001, Amer- international jihad, after granting ican intelligence agencies were asylum to exiled Islamist leaders issuing regular warnings within from across North Africa and the the government about jihadist Middle East. Among these was a strikes on U.S. interests across Jordanian-born Palestinian cleric the world. Diplomatic facilities in known as Abu Qatada, one of the France were among the suspect- world’s preeminent jihadi theolo- ed targets; according to Caprioli, gians. Beghal traveled often from the French had intelligence that Leicester to London to see Abu specifically suggested a plot to Qatada, who preached on Fridays bomb the American Embassy in to small groups of men at a rented com- in 2000, they settled into the ground Paris. American suspicions came to munity center on Baker Street, in cen- floor of a spacious two-story home. “To rest on Beghal. tral London. Abu Qatada’s exhortations rebuild this country anew was a historic In July, Beghal left Afghanistan to jihad were issued in a soft, deliberate, opportunity,” Beghal wrote to me. “This with the wife and children of Abu breathy voice. “He was in a dialectic of, was my precious DREAM. Can you Iyadh, whose youngest son was said to ‘The Muslims cannot remain in this imagine the good fortune to have a be too sick to go on living in the dif- state indefinitely: their rulers are tyran- whole virgin country ready to be drawn, ficult conditions in Afghanistan. Be- nical toward them, their resources are shaped, adorned, instructed, construct- ghal maintains that he intended to squandered by these tyrants for the ed, repainted in the colors of an enlight- accompany the boy and his mother, a profit of Western nations, so there must ened and intelligently modern Islam! Moroccan, to her home country for be a certain awakening,’ ” said Daoudi, Can you imagine?” medical treatment. They planned to who followed Abu Qatada’s preaching Beghal traveled often to meet with fly from Islamabad to Abu Dhabi, and, closely from France. “And this awaken- other Islamists. “In Afghanistan,” he after a layover of several hours, from ing will be necessarily violent, because, said, “everyone is bound to meet every- Abu Dhabi to Casablanca. But Amer- well, because the tyrannical, despotic one.” At least once, he spoke with ican and French intelligence officials powers will want to keep their powers.” Ayman al-Zawahiri, the jihadist ideo- learned about the stopover in the Beghal came to feel a deep attach- logue who is now Al Qaeda’s leader. Emirates ahead of time, from an inter- ment to Abu Qatada, who sent Beghal Beghal described him as “accessible” cepted phone conversation. throughout Europe to collect donations and “welcoming,” though not one to At the airport on July 29, several and distribute recordings of his sermons. waste time with “verbal or other futili- men in white robes and dark glasses The French took notice. “We saw that ties.” He also spent time with Abu surrounded Beghal and led him to a he was a figure who was on the rise,” said Musab al-Zarqawi, the thuggish but black SUV. He says they placed him in Caprioli, who was then the assistant “shining” and “humble” commander the back seat, blindfolded him, and

56 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JANUARY 2016 Surveillance, by Anonymous shot electrical charges into his knees Beghal’s confession was the only use- with what appeared to be cattle prods. ful evidence of an embassy plot that the Later, the echo of the engine suggested French uncovered in three years of in- that he was descending into an under- vestigation. In 2005, he was convicted ground complex. Beghal was stripped not for the embassy plot but rather, and given a blue tunic; interrogations according to the language of the ruling, began immediately. for belonging to a “vast network” of Beghal claims that while he was in men who had taken up “ideas and the- Emirati custody, his toenails were pulled ses advocating jihad and violence” and out, his fingers were bent backward had received arms training in Afghan- “with a sort of bottle opener, until they istan. “Quite obviously,” the court touched the bone of my hand,” a wis- found, Beghal and his accomplices, dom tooth was drilled without the use including Daoudi, were “ineluctably of anesthetic, and he was injected with fated to enter, at a given “products producing much pain, vomit- time, into violent action.” ing.” His weight fell from about 200 pounds to 140, he says. (Though there here the American govern- have been small discrepancies in his mentW has, by circumstance and by account over the years, the claims are choice, handled Islamist terror sus- widely seen as credible.) pects primarily as enemy combat- “What kept coming back,” he once ants to be kidnapped or killed, wrote, “without ceasing: ‘Bin Laden gave France has generally treated them you a mission.’ Then, in the face of my as criminals to be tried. It is the negative answers, a break and—I think power of association de malfaiteurs after September 11 and its events—they terroriste that has, in large part, per- came back with a scenario: ‘You were mitted this judicial approach. tasked with attacking the embassy of the According to Bruguière, who is of- U.S. in Paris,’ just like that, with no in- ten credited as the architect of the troduction. They didn’t stop hammering law, it was designed as a “force multi- me with this story.” plier in prevention,” allowing officials On October 1, 2001, Beghal was se- to “detect dangerous behavior ahead dated, strung up by his wrists “like a bat” of time” and to “neutralize people ju- from the ceiling of a military transport dicially.” The approach, he boasted, plane, and flown to France. On arrival, was “very new, very pioneering, and he was brought directly to a Paris court- without precedent in the history of house for questioning, where he waited the world.” Since its passage, in 1996, in the hallway outside the office of Jean- association de malfaiteurs terroriste has Louis Bruguière, an investigative mag- permitted thousands of arrests and istrate who has handled some of the hundreds of convictions. French au- country’s most famous terrorism cases. thorities contend that it has prevent- It was late in the morning, and Bru- ed dozens and dozens of terror killings guière and his partner, Jean-Franc¸ois in France. Ricard, were conferring inside; Ricard The law criminalizes “the fact of left to buy a sandwich for lunch, and as participating in a grouping formed or he passed Beghal, he asked whether he an agreement established with a view might like one as well. “Yes,” Beghal to the preparation” of one of a number said, with a prankish smile. “But prefer- of “acts of terrorism.” (“Terrorism” is ably not with ham!” In a dozen years as defined, broadly, in separate articles.) a counter terrorism magistrate, Ricard Critically, the text makes no mention said, this was the only joke he ever of any standard for demonstrating the heard from an Islamist. existence of the “grouping” or “agree- Beghal had confessed to the em- ment”; regular contact between suspects bassy plot while he was in Abu Dhabi, tends to be evidence enough. There is but in Paris he said that he had done also no requirement that suspects have so only after weeks of torture. When ties to any known or officially recog- Bruguière heard that Beghal was re- nized terror organization. Defense at- tracting his confession, he was livid; torneys routinely complain that their in a spasm of unconscious rage, he clients have been charged with an “ad- jammed his fingers into the sopping dress book” crime: guilt is, quite liter- armpits of his dress shirt. ally, established by association.

REPORT 57 Bruguière acknowledged that he had from the American Embassy to discuss ously, the nature of the threat. “If we not in fact been able to prove, “judicially,” French counterterrorism practices. have to wait for them to start reasoning the existence of a plot in Beghal’s case. Within the French justice system, Ricard like us, we’re going to get blown up.” (In the press, and in a 2009 book about said, “the benefit of the doubt” was ac- Beghal has called association de mal- his counterterrorism work, he has corded to counterterrorism magistrates, faiteurs terroriste the “ ‘black hole’ of claimed otherwise.) “But we did establish not the suspects they investigate, accord- French law, which swallows up all the that he was linked to a whole interna- ing to a diplomatic cable published by cases that don’t hold together.” Though tional network of jihadists, in Belgium, WikiLeaks. “As an example,” the cable the law was initially credited with stop- in Great Britain, and that he himself reads, “Ricard said that the proof against ping terror attacks in France, since 2012 participated in plans—undefined plans, recently convicted Djamel Beghal and jihadists have killed at least 155 people for which the targets were not given— his accomplices, accused of plotting to in the country. The attack in November aiming to commit terrorist actions on bomb the U.S. Embassy, would not was the deadliest episode of Islamist European soil,” Bruguière said. terror in French history. Prevention is the goal, and so, by “It’s not the judicial side that’s design, the existence of a plot, or TERROR CHARGES CONFER having the most trouble with to- rather the existence of the possibility PRESTIGE IN FRENCH PRISONS, AS day’s reality,” Ricard told me after of a future plot, is enough to win the Bataclan massacre, “it’s the in- convictions. According to Irène DO TIES TO CELEBRITY CRIMINALS. telligence side.” There are too many Stoller, a former counterterrorism extremists for the DST to track. prosecutor, a suspect “is not convict- BEGHAL WAS AN OBJECT OF AWE What’s more, a generation of asso- ed for an attempt,” but for his appar- ciation convicts are now completing ent intent. (An attempted act of terror normally be sufficient to convict them, their sentences and reentering society. can carry a life sentence; association de but he believed his office was successful Beaupuis said that she has been fear- malfaiteurs generally carries a maximum because of their reputation.” ing this moment for sentence of ten years.) “That’s the util- Ricard claims never to have said the past ten years. ity of this infraction,” Stoller said. “It this, that it is in fact “a sort of reduc- really is very, very, very useful.” tionist summary of a whole series of error charges confer a certain Whereas standard criminal investi- discussions” with officials from the Tprestige within French prisons, as gations proceed backward from a crim- Justice Department and the FBI. do ties to celebrity criminals. Be- inal act, collecting evidence to deduce What he meant to impress on the ghal, who was presented by investi- the guilt of one among a range of pos- Americans, he said, was that he and gators as one of bin Laden’s top op- sible suspects, cases of association de Bruguière had demonstrated simply eratives in Europe, was an object of malfaiteurs look forward toward an that Beghal had formed a “group” awe. Muslim prisoners, especially imagined act. A suspect is selected with the intent to “commit an action” those imprisoned on terrorism charg- and evidence is collected in order to of some sort. As for what that action es, viewed him as a sage. infer his potential for guilt in any could have been, Ricard admitted, “He is a sort of star,” said Farhad number of possible crimes. “One has to be honest and objective: Khosrokhavar, a sociologist who has Beghal “didn’t have a normal way of I don’t know.” conducted more than a decade of re- life,” said Béatrice de Beaupuis, the Unlike the legal structures by which search on religious extremism in French prosecutor who successfully upheld his they are judged in France, Ricard told prisons. Guards speak of Beghal as a 2005 conviction on appeal. “That’s me, Sunni jihadists do not operate in particularly effective jihadist recruiter. what gave him away. He fit a terrorist accordance with Cartesian principles; “Everyone remembers him,” Khosro profile that was pretty well defined,” their plots do not fit neatly into the khavar said. “Each time he passed Beaupuis said. “We knew where they qualifications of traditional French law. through somewhere, he left a trace.” lived, they always went to the same “They don’t reason like us at all,” he said. Daoudi told me that in exchange for places, they went to such-and-such “A ‘Western’ terrorist, let’s say, in a revo- a promise that Beghal use his influence countries, et cetera.” lutionary or nationalist line of reasoning, to help keep the peace, one prison di- Beaupuis acknowledged the dangers will, for instance, give himself an objec- rector allowed him to hold prayer meet- of such reasoning, but she contended tive: ‘We’re going to assassinate such- ings in the rec yard and to perform that the law took those dangers into and-such person.’ Classic. Or: ‘We have marriage ceremonies for other inmates account. Sometimes, she said, there to assassinate soldiers, judges, whatever in visiting rooms. “If he wanted to set was legitimate doubt about whether you like.’ And then they acquire the off a riot, he could have just snapped his suspects would in fact have committed means. They do the scouting. They or- fingers,” Daoudi said. violence. In such cases, she told me, ganize themselves. They prepare the Precisely how many French prisoners “It’s indeed better not to keep them matériel. And then they take action.” For consider themselves Muslims remains locked up too long, because it really Sunni jihadists, he said, “The objective unclear, as the country’s public institu- risks radicalizing them.” itself, the target that’s supposed to be hit, tions are barred from collecting ethnic In May 2005, two months after Be- may be chosen only very late.” To require or religious statistics. (In accordance ghal’s conviction, Ricard, Bruguière’s a prosecutor to prove the existence of a with the French Republic’s egalitarian partner in the case, met with officials specific plot is to misunderstand, danger- ideology, inmates are all recognized

58 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JANUARY 2016 simply as inmates, just as citizens are 200 by early 2015. According to acknowledged simply as citizens, with- Bruno Clément-Pétremann, who ran out color or creed.) But Khosrokhavar security for the state prison adminis- believes that as many as 60 percent of tration, another 2,000 inmates are the system’s 66,000 prisoners are Mus- considered “radicalized.” lim. According to the prison adminis- All French terrorism cases are tried tration, 18,000 inmates, more than a in Paris, where they are handled by a quarter of the total, fasted for Ramadan small cadre of specialized prosecutors; THE SIXTIES: in 2014. (Muslims represent less than given the backlog of cases, and the of- RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 10 percent of France’s population.) ten lengthy investigations they entail, DECADE FROM “There really is an ambience of reli- many terror suspects spend years in the HARPER’S MAGAZINE giosity,” said Mourad Dhina, the director prisons of the Paris region, where they of the human-rights group Alkarama, are housed with the general population, Introduction by which is based in Geneva. Dhina, who before being sent before a court. When Eugene J. McCarthy is also the founder of an Algerian op- Coulibaly, the kosher-grocery killer, position movement, was imprisoned in was asked in 2010 about Islamists he Relive the decade that changed Paris for nearly six months in 2012, hav- knew, he told investigators, “If you want our lives—Vietnam, Oswald, ing been falsely accused by the Algerian me to tell you all the terrorists I know, Cassius Clay, Castro’s Cuba, civil regime of a terror plot; during his deten- we’re not done yet, I know all of them: rights, pot, the 1968 election . . . tion he met and spoke at length with the ones from the Chechen networks, Beghal. Dhina said that there was con- the ones from the Afghan networks.” From a heart-wrenching war that stant discussion of Islamic rules and He said he had met them in prison. tore America apart to the political rituals, and many young men turned to For the past twenty years, it has Beghal for his religious knowledge. Few been the unofficial policy of the French turmoil that destroyed our illusions other options were available: only 189 prison administration to spread Sunni of innocence. From the music and Muslim chaplains are registered with the extremists throughout the population art that made us think and feel in prison system, many of them retirees of each prison, so as to dilute their new ways to the activism and volunteering their time. influence. (Many are held for extended experimentation that changed In the current French context, Islam periods in isolation, though they often American society forever. The Sixties is often seen as inherently political. manage to communicate with other reviews that decade of change, The separation of church and state has inmates nonetheless. By Beghal’s focusing on politics, the civil rights been enshrined in French law for more count, he has spent nearly ten years in movement, youth culture, and much than a century, but a stringent and isolation, which he is fond of calling more from the unique and far- unaccommodating interpretation of “legal torture.”) Evidently, the unin- sighted perspective of the nation’s laïcité, the country’s official commit- tended consequences of this approach ment to secularism, has become the have been significant. “We never asked oldest monthly magazine. It includes cultural and political norm in recent ourselves the question of whether we profiles, interviews, commentaries, years. Many Muslims view the policy, should be regrouping them, whether and essays by some of the best in its present form, as little more than we should be handling them specially,” writers of the ’60s era, including anti-Islamic bigotry cloaked in liberal Clément-Pétremann said. George Plimpton, Walker Percy, rhetoric. (Charlie Hebdo was and re- The flow of new inmates from the war Joe McGinnis, David Halberstam, mains committed to a strident, anti- in Syria has forced a reevaluation of the Richard Hofstadter, C. Vann clerical form of laïcité.) old approach. The prison administration Woodward, Priscilla Johnson In prison, laïcité is the reason for rules is now experimenting with quarantine McMillan, Sara Davidson, and against praying or preaching in shared sectors and “deradicalization” programs Louis Lomax. Introduction by spaces. It has given rise in some prisons for about a hundred prisoners. The in- Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, to unofficial bans on Muslim prayer rugs mates will be forced to confront victims and refusals to serve halal food. Accord- of jihadist violence, and will speak to presidential peace candidate of 1968. ing to Dhina, jihadists tell new inmates, reformed jihadists. They will also, ac- Order today through “You’re here because you’re named Mo- cording to Clément-Pétremann, do store.harpers.org hammed,” or because “the crusaders” group therapy and “cultural activities, who control the state hate Islam. Chris- with the objective of the restoration of Published by Franklin Square Press tiane Taubira, the French minister of the self, the restoring of one’s self-image.” ISBN 1-879957-20-5 justice, called the prisons “fertile ground Beghal has been held in at least ten Softcover $14.95 for indoctrination.” prisons since his arrest in 2001. In F RANKLIN As of June 2014, ninety inmates 2005, as the trial for the embassy plot SQUARE PRESS were registered by the prison admin- reached its end, he was placed in soli- istration as being linked to Islamist tary confinement in a top-floor cell terror groups. The number had risen at Fleury-Mérogis, a hexagonal pris- to 140 by October of that year, and to on complex built in the 1960s that Distributed through Midpoint Trade Books REPORT 59 resembles, in its lifeless geometry, the though this is very grave.” She replied, Chérif wrote to say he’d fallen in love, housing projects in which many of its testily: “Pardon my ignorance, but Al- and asked whether he should take a inmates were raised. It is Europe’s larg- lah will judge whether I’m an infidel, second wife. “A man like you needs to est prison, with a population of about not you.” stay light,” Beghal replied, “and not 4,000, and it is habitually overcrowded. Yet Beghal could be patient too, weigh himself down with two, three, or Coulibaly, who at twenty-three had even tender, especially toward the tur- four wives, even though it’s allowed!” been in and out of prison three times bulent young men who were drawn to To have two wives, he said, would be a already, was assigned to a cell directly him. He adopted their slang; his text “double obstacle” to hegira, emigration beneath Beghal. The two men spoke, messages were composed with the to a Muslim land, “or other more im- presumably through the exterior win- lexical style of a teenager. He was still portant things,” which were left un- dows of their cells. Chérif Kouachi ar- a zealot, but his persona evolved with specified. “Naam,” Kouachi replied, rived at Fleury-Mérogis at his audience. A psychological evalua- “but women, it’s some crazy stuff.” around the same time. tor once found him to be “amiable and Then, in a change of tone, he contin- menacing, decent and contemptuous.” ued: “I’m useless at religion, I aspire to n 2009, Beghal’s lawyer, Bérenger His wife and children visited every nothing if only to take care of my wife Tourné,I came to collect him at a deten- few months. After returning from Af- and raise my future children tion center on the edge of Paris. The ghanistan, they had settled again in in religion.” former prisoner embraced a tree and Leicester; the children were now in then climbed onto the back of his at- school, and the decision was made that he police investigation into the torney’s motorcycle. At the Gare de Lyon they should stay in England. Coulibaly Tplot that got Beghal rearrested began he boarded a train, alone and unes- in February 2010. Over three corted, and rode several hours into months, the authorities listened in the French interior. A small room had THE YOUNG MEN WERE EAGER TO on dozens of conversations among been requisitioned for him at a hotel Beghal, Coulibaly, and Kouachi, as in Murat; the owners, feeling bad for PLEASE BEGHAL AND CAME TO HIM well as several other Islamists. They their lonely guest, soon moved him to followed the men on the highway, WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT a furnished apartment on a street and photographed them in Murat. lined with plane trees. WAS RELIGIOUSLY PERMISSIBLE The surveillance produced no clear Beghal was gregarious and well indication of a terror plot. Still, as liked in Murat. He befriended the Beaupuis might have put it, the local dentist, a devout Catholic and and Kouachi visited him several times. men did not seem to be behaving like irrepressible conspiracy theorist who Often they walked in the dusky hills normal people. On the phone, they joked at their first meeting, “So it’s you, around Murat or exercised at the mu- communicated in vague, coded terms the big tough guy!” Privately, however, nicipal soccer pitch. In a phone call and went to great lengths to avoid Beghal had grown bitter and self- recorded by investigators in April 2010, speaking one another’s proper names. righteous. From his “misadventure” Kouachi, who was in Murat at the In May, Beghal, Coulibaly, and Koua- with the judicial system, he wrote in time, excitedly told Coulibaly that he chi were arrested and charged with 2009, he had learned that “in France, and Beghal had been doing little more association de malfaiteurs terroriste, ac- it is enough to be a Muslim, practicing, than running and sleeping. cused of plotting a prison escape for who goes more or less diligently to a “Oh, that’s great, you all are cool Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, an Islamist mosque, who takes an interest in the down there,” Coulibaly said. involved in the bombings of 1995. suffering of Muslims in the world like “Yeah, we’re cool down here, all After months of further investiga- the Palestinians, Afghans, or Che that’s missing is you, but you don’t want tion, evidence for the plot remained chens . . . to appear on the DST’s ‘shop- to come!” Kouachi teased. “Right now scant and circumstantial. There ping list’ and end up being used and we’re not ‘cool,’ we’re ‘coo.’ If you was was an intercepted telephone conversa- presented, later, according to their here, there’d be the l in ‘cool.’ ” tion between Beghal and Belkacem in needs, as being a terrorist network of Coulibaly laughed. Beghal had been which they had compared the relative the most dangerous kind. It’s as simple doing imitations of him, Kouachi re- merits of several ahadith, instructive as that!” ported, and this had kept them “dying episodes from the life of Mohammed— He lectured his family and friends the whole day.” Beghal, in turn, investigators presumed each to signify about Islamic piety, often because they told me that Kouachi “could make a a different escape strategy—and dis- sought his views, but not always. He deaf-mute laugh.” cussed how best to go about acquiring once chastised his sister Sakina, who The young men seemed eager to books—a stand-in for guns, it was be- did not share his fundamentalist views, please Beghal with their personal and lieved. “If there aren’t books,” Belkacem for wishing him a happy birthday. “The religious devotion, and they often came said at another point, “you can’t learn.” birthday is a rite of the infidels,” he told to him with questions about what was Beghal announced that he had been her. “I’ve said it a thousand times before. religiously permissible. Once, Cou- preparing “something” for several years, But you persist in offending Allah and libaly asked whether it was acceptable “stone by stone,” but that it would re- pleasing and resembling the enemies of for him to give money to a charity run quire still more time “because it’s not a Allah with neither fear nor shame, even by nonbelievers. (Beghal told him no.) joke, and it’s not a game.”

60 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JANUARY 2016 MORE THAN A WEATHER INSTRUMENT. AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL.

During his year of semi-liberty, Be- a weapon, and that this weapon was MORE THAN A ghal’s family visited him several times intended to help break Bel kacem WEATHER INSTRUMENT. in Murat. He took dozens of photo- from prison, just as it is possible that graphs and videos, which investigators Bel kacem was then going to poison AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL. discovered on his arrest. On a yellow Paris’s municipal water supply, or summer evening, he and his family plant a bomb somewhere, or travel to hiked the parched hills around the Murat to set out on the lam with MORE THAN village. Pausing to rest, they squinted Beghal. But it could not be shown into the warm, heavy light, casting that any of these were more than A WEATHER long shadows. They ate breakfast in alarming hypotheticals. INSTRUMENT. their pajamas, in a tent at a campsite “It is hardly important that the goal at the edge of town. Beghal’s daugh- be precise,” the state prosecutor remind- AN AMERICAN ter, a ten-year-old in a tattersall sum- ed the court at trial, inMORE 2013. “What THAN A WEATHERORIGINAL. INSTRUMENT. mer dress and bandanna, romped in counts is that they share a common goal a stream. In the winter, bundled in a and the ideology that underlies it.” AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL. hooded parka, she made a snow angel. The case was indeed “a bit shaky,” Later, she held icicles under her lip like a lawyer involved in the prosecution fangs and bared her teeth in a comic admitted. “More-cautious magistrates” grimace; her father did the same, and might not have brought Beghal to MORE THAN A they held their heads together for a trial. Still, Beghal “is very, very dan- WEATHER INSTRUMENT. selfie in the cold. gerous,” the lawyer contended, sug- AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL. In drawers and boxes throughout gesting that investigators may have Beghal’s apartment, investigators also rushed to make arrests because they found ten phones and numerous SIM feared some violence was imminent. cards, at least one of which had been “They said to themselves, ‘We can’t MORE THAN registered under a false name. Press wait any longer, surely we’ll find some www.maximum-inc.comA WEATHER clippings and printouts, in Arabic and things during our raids that will bol- French, were piled on a desk and ster our case,’ ” he said. “Once they’d INSTRUMENT. spoke of “kamikaze operations” and a done it, they saw that there wasn’t spectacular escape, involving a heli- much to be found.” AN AMERICAN copter, from a prison in the south of On the morning of Beghal’s arrest ORIGINAL. France. A laptop computer and four in Murat, investigators tore out the external hard drives held scores of ceiling of his apartment. According SUBSCRIBER ALERT similar documents and jihadist texts, to Beghal, they called their com- in addition to images of assault rifles manders in a panic when they found Dear Harper’s Magazine Readers, and the twin towers of the World no weapons: “There’s nothing! There’s Trade Center in flames. nothing! Squat!” It has come to our attention that Beghal appeared to have asked On the final day of the trial, in the several of our subscribers have Coulibaly to buy something for late autumn of 2013, Kouachi sat si- received renewal notifications him—investigators believed it to be lently in the audience. (Though he from an independent magazine a gun—but this could not be proved, had been held in prison for nearly five and no purchase was found to have months and placed under court su- clearinghouse doing business occurred. In the hallway closet of pervision for another three years, he under the names Magazine Bill- Coulibaly’s apartment, though, po- was not tried.) By this time, it ap- ing Services, Publishers Process- lice found 240 military-grade 7.62mm pears, either he or his brother had ing Services Inc., and American cartridges. “I’m trying to sell them traveled to Yemen and returned with Consumer Publish Assoc. These on the street,” he claimed. Later, he orders to destroy Charlie Hebdo. companies have not been autho- told a judge: “Never in my life Across the courtroom, he and Beghal would I participate in a terror attack exchanged smiles. Coulibaly was rized to sell subscriptions on be- or something as serious as that. I given five years; he would be released half of Harper’s Magazine. live in France—my family, the peo- just a few months later. Beghal was ple close to me, everyone—and it given ten, the maximum. This, Be- If you receive a renewal notice would never even occur to me to do ghal said, was the last he saw or heard and are unsure of its authenticity, things like that.” from his two young friends. please call our subscriber ser- Throughout the case, there were “I am not the mentor of the Koua- troubling discoveries for which the chi brothers, Chérif and Saïd, and vices department and order your defendants offered improbable expla- Amedy Coulibaly,” he wrote to me. renewal through them. You may nations, but little material evidence “Believe me, these boys, these genuine contact subscriber services by of any particular plot. It is possible brothers, brought me more than the calling our toll-free number, that Beghal ordered Coulibaly to buy few things I might have been able to (800) 444-4653, or via the Web at www.harpers.org.

REPORT 61 bring them. At the moment when the means you haven’t succeeded in being dling by the French state if he did not world had closed its doors to me and understood, in being sufficiently con- believe what he believes. And yet human civilization had forsaken me, vincing,” he said. After the shootings given those beliefs, what could he pos- high on a mountain peak, they WERE at Charlie Hebdo, he said, many French sibly say, or refrain from saying, to THERE. This is nobility, true frater- felt impelled to adopt the publication’s convince the world that he is not a nity, just as recommended by our Is- hard-line laïcité: “The famous, ‘We are danger? What credence can possibly be lam. . . . By Allah Almighty all Charlie.’ ” The killers conducted “a lent to his words, or to his silence? I miss them dreadfully.” poor analysis of what French society is.” Even if he has never committed a Yet Daoudi, too, thought that the crime, in the traditional sense of the n an interview Beghal gave follow- error was more tactical than moral. word, how can he be trusted not to Iing the Charlie Hebdo attacks, he con- “Well, I mean, objectively,” he said, after commit violence, or not to militate for demned the killings, but only as tacti- a long moment of hesitation, “without it, or not to somehow provoke it? cal errors. Had he not been in prison, being cynical, the target was good, was The same dilemma applies to Daoudi. Beghal said, Kouachi and Coulibaly the right one. As far as communication He has served his time in prison, and, “would probably have asked my advice goes, the target was perfectly chosen.” unlike Beghal, he says that his thinking before moving into violence.” He “If you really want to be cynical has changed. He would like “to be al- claimed that he would have “guided right up to the end,” Daoudi went on, lowed to move on,” he told me. But, he them quite differently,” convincing warming to his subject, “this could concedes that he cannot be trusted, at them, perhaps, that Charlie Hebdo was actually, on the contrary, be an ap- least not in any absolute sense. “The in fact a gift to Islam. He said that he proach that’s intelligent, insofar as it problem,” he said, “is that you can’t trust would have told them that the “intoler- will create a clash. A genuine clash of anyone, I don’t think.” I asked him if he ance,” “disrespect,” and “contempt” of civilizations.” Within this framework, was ever tempted to join the fight in the newspaper’s cartoonists “and their the backlash against Muslims would in Syria. Daoudi reflected briefly. “No, no, imbecilic supporters” would “in the end fact be the intent of the killings; this I don’t think so,” he said, “My current play in favor of Islam, and the strength- backlash would, in turn, provoke alien- thinking really is to refocus my energies ening of its cause in the contemporary ation and, eventually, an uprising of on myself.” Were he more cynical, more world.” In a letter to me, he said he the Muslim masses. strategic, or simply less thoughtful, he does not support attacks against “easy” This view of the attack fits well with might have taken this opportunity to or non-combatant targets. “I prefer and Beghal’s “mystical vision” of a proclaim a definitive rejection of jihad. favor the power of the just word,” Be- “thousand-year Islam,” Daoudi said. Instead it appears that he chose to be ghal wrote. “The aim of my cause is to And though Beghal has been critical honest, to acknowledge the vagaries of save man, not to destroy him.” of the Islamic State, his worldview is conviction and belief. It stands to rea- In other letters, though, Beghal de- also compatible with the group’s call to son that this apparent sincerity will not fended the killers. “The Kouachi broth- eliminate the “gray zone”—the world be rewarded. It is possible, of course, ers have full responsibility and they inhabited by Muslims living peacefully that Daoudi remains a committed ji- took it on without complaint or snivel- in the West: “Muslims in the crusader hadist and has calculated that small ing, at the price of their lives and up countries will find themselves driven to admissions will help to obscure the until the final drop of blood. As for the abandon their homes . . . as the crusad- larger truth of his dark intent. As he caricaturists, and their pyromaniac al- ers increase persecution.” In November, said about Beghal, how can we claim to lies . . . they set off their own misfortune. the French government decreed a know someone else? Would it not have been worth it for three-month state of emergency; some Open societies tend to accept this them to shut their mouths and draw officials spoke of creating internment sort of uncertainty as the inevitable something else instead of playing with camps for the thousands of people consequence of their openness. Such a grenade with the pin pulled out?” whom the intelligence services have societies are premised, necessarily, on a Still, he refused to say whether he deemed potential dangers. certain faith in the good intentions of believed the attack was just. “As for my Whatever Beghal’s original reserva- their citizens. Perhaps a government opinion, on the question of the morality tions about the idea of striking the will watch its citizens closely, perhaps or not of the killing,” he wrote, “I prob- West, he thinks the September 11 at- it will attempt to sway their opinions or ably have one, which can evolve, inci- tacks, in particular, were justified. He engage them in debate, but punishment dentally, according to my knowledge or told me that in the summer of 2001, the generally comes after the fact of a weaknesses of the moment. Only, I do American intelligence services were crime, not before. No one can be trust- not have an excessive ego, nor enough “FOOLED by concentrating fully on ed, and yet, to some degree, everyone narcissism, to feel myself so important myself, and left the gates wide open must be. as to give it.” I haven’t heard from Be- for strikes on American soil. My sto- Beghal’s release is scheduled for ghal since the November attacks, so I ry poisoned what should have been 2020. Presumably he will be placed don’t know what he made of the most their lucidity. The decree of the Just, once again under house arrest some- recent round of civilian deaths. All-powerful creator of worlds had where in France. Perhaps he will plot Daoudi, by contrast, was willing to sealed this destiny! It had to be so.” his revenge; he will have little else to say straightforwardly that he thought It would be far easier to muster sym- do. Or perhaps he will not. This will be violence was an ineffective tool. “It pathy for the man and lament his han- a matter of faith. n

62 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JANUARY 2016