http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2370082
Pascale Combelles Siegel
"In the mid-1990s, after an unprecedented campaign of terrorist attacks in Paris, the French government dismantled several Algerian GIA-backed terrorist cells and sentenced both operatives and financiers of the attacks to lengthy prison terms. A new wave of convicts followed suit after the dismantling of another terrorist cell before the 1998 World Cup. Yet these anti-terrorism successes created a different set of problems as radical Islamists began proselytizing their views to fellow inmates and recruiting new followers in prisons. Pascal Maihlos, the director of France's domestic intelligence agency, Renseignements Généraux (RG), put it plainly in an interview with Le Monde earlier this year: "It is there, in prison, that a minority of radical Islamist terrorists (about 100) hook up with petty criminals who find their way back to religion under its most radical form" (Top Chrétien, November 25, 2005)." [Top Topic]
