[MAGHAREBIA] Young prison inmates are at high risk of turning to violence later on, international experts warned this week in Algiers.The Algiers-based African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism (CAERT) hosted the meeting on Wednesday (February 27th).
"The prison environment favours the spread of messages and excesses that encourage a number of young people to embrace violent extremism based on a wrong view or interpretation of religion," said Algerian presidential advisor Kamel Rezzag-Bara.
In the framework of the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, programmes were established in prisons, Rezzag-Bara explained.
A large number of released prisoners did not re-join terrorist groups, which is a testimony to Algeria's success in the matter, he added.
Terrorists act on conviction, and that Algeria needs to continue to "effectively combat" terrorism by addressing the ideology behind these actions, Rezzag-Bara noted.
Two years ago the justice and religious affairs ministries launched a special programme in Algerian prisons. They recruited 250 imams, male and female religious guides to guide the religious ideas of 55,000 inmates and prevent the spread of takfir
...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who most be killed...
ist ideology.
The Global Counter-Terrorism Forum "provided answers in enhancing and enforcing laws [for] rehabilitating and reintegrating terrorist prisoners", United Nations
...boodling on the grand scale...
Inter-Regional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) Director Jonathan Lucas said.
EU Counter-terrorism Co-ordinator Gilles Kerchove stressed the need to fight terrorism by involving society.
"We have to work in co-ordination with non-governmental organizations, civil society, security agencies, prison, education and health officials because these areas are in daily and direct contact with individuals," he said.
The workshop, which was organised in co-operation with UNICRI, presented the experiences of countries which successfully prevented imprisoned violent Islamic fascisti from returning to their former way of life.
Participants agreed on the need to study the reasons that draw young people to terrorism.
The Association of Sahel Preachers and Scholars for Renouncing Violence and Extremism seeks to get its message across by making scholars communicate with young people.
They do this in "prisons and public places, such as mosques", founding member Sheikh Abu Said Belaid Bin Ahmed Imam explained.
The association's work would continue "as long as this ideology exists", he said, adding that extremism was caused by fatwas imported from overseas.
"Prisons have become like schools for takfir. We need to change the religious speech used to reintegrate prisoners, to immunise them against takfirist ideology," he said.