Chérif and Saïd Kouachi are the two men who killed 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The brothers went on to kill four more people in a kosher supermarket. Why, when and how did these Muslim brothers become jihadists? Some blame the prison system.
According to The Economist, “Chérif Kouachi seems to have been radicalized during his time at Fleury-Mérogis prison south of Paris in 2005-06. A one-time pizza-delivery driver, he was jailed in a case involving the organization of jihadists to fight Americans in Iraq. But prison hardened him further, particularly through links he made to Djamel Beghal, a jihadist convicted for attempting to bomb the American embassy in Paris in 2001.” With 3,800 prisoners, Fleury-Mérogis is the largest prison in Europe.