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, twenty-one-year-oldI 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 recog- nized 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 partici- pating in an alleged Al Qaeda plot to bomb the American Embassy in Paris. The ringleader of the operation, according to the French au- thorities, was Beghal, who had been arrested in July. Daoudi denies involvement in or knowledge of any such plot; several years of investiga- tion 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.

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