Louise Bernard
modified to
11:46 a.m., September 12, 2022
This week, La Croix Hebdo focuses on those leaving prison convicted of association with terrorist criminals. An investigation signed Marie Boëton and Marianne Meunier, in which the two journalists are interested in the security challenge that this represents, but also in the question of their reintegration.
It is a topical subject that is rarely talked about: people leaving prison. Around 2015, there were numerous convictions, in particular for association with terrorist criminals. With prison sentences of six, seven or eight years in prison. It is therefore at this moment that there are many releases from prison: 150 released in the last two years. And there will be a hundred of them just for the year 2022. La Croix Hebdo therefore wanted to take an interest in the security challenge that these prison leavers represent.
“A decisive subject”
“What is quite difficult, given the seriousness of the acts for which they are prosecuted and the seriousness of their violent and radical commitment, is to know how we can ensure that these people do not reoffend, without preventing their reintegration. France has not opted for a French-style Guantánamo, these people will one day or another be released, except for very specific cases like that of Salah Abdeslam. This is a decisive subject”, explains at the microphone of Europe 1 Marie Boëton, co-author of the file.
The director of the penitentiary administration also underlines that today there are more outgoing terrorists than incoming. Proof that the challenge is there. How to keep a watch while accepting that these leavers have served their sentence? How not to create more resentment among them, with all the surveillance constraints imposed? Resentment which could then turn against society… Marie Boëton and Marianne Meunier interviewed a wide variety of actors in this challenge: judges, national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office, prosecutor, lawyers, also the main people concerned: three former prisoners.
The role of French intelligence agents
And they also questioned French intelligence agents. La Croix Hebdo also reveals the practices of prison intelligence. “In prison, there are 300 intelligence agents, which is very recent. These are 300 people who, even in the eyes of their colleagues and their families, pass for lambda supervisors. In fact, they only have a vocation: to add sound to the cells, to ensure that the detainees they want to follow have a telephone in their hands to be able to intercept their communications”, adds Marie Boëton, co-author with Marianne Meunier of this investigation: “Terrorists: the prison and after ?”. To be found in La Croix Hebdo, already on newsstands.