Where does France want to send it's jihadists? To Devil's Island!
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A French politician is turning heads after he called for France's infamous Devil's Island to be reopened, to be used as a prison for jihadists who are returning to Europe after fighting in the Middle East.
Highlights
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
12/1/2014 (1 decade ago)
Published in Europe
Keywords: Europe, France, Islamic State, Penal Colony
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Devil's Island, a former penal colony in South America, would be a fitting prison for the "madmen" who have fought with Islamic groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, said Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.
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Located in French Guiana, the island is known as the place where a Jewish French army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was imprisoned after being unjustly found guilty of treason during one of the greatest sham-trials of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The island was also the location of the 1973 film Papillon, which stared Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.
Dupon-Aignan is the founder of the right-wing DLF party, which is an affiliate of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party.
He has insisted his proposal has widespread support, and is just the latest among a series of proposed solutions to the growing problem of radicalized Muslims returning to Europe after fighting for radical Islamist and terrorist groups in the Middle East.
Dupon-Aignan proposed "the re-establishment of a Cayenne detention center which would allow us to permanently isolate the madmen."
Devil's Island has a brutal record. As a prison, tropical disease and starvation were common, as were savage beatings from unsympathetic guards.
So far, the number of French nationals fighting in Syria and Iraq ranges between 1,000 and 4,000. In early November, two such nationals, Mickael Dos Santos and Maxime Hauchard-appeared in a video made by the Islamic State which also showed the decapitated bodies of a U.S. citizen who was in Syria as an aid worker, and 18 Syrian soldiers.
Since 2012, returning jihadists to France have been connected with 11 murders.
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