Already wrestling with a constantly-evolving terror threat, European intelligence agencies spy a new problem on the horizon: hundreds of jihadists due to be released from prison. Battling to stop further attacks like those seen everywhere from London to Paris, Brussels to Barcelona, freshly-released prisoners will add to agencies’ surveillance burden. Although many may go on to lead peaceful lives after prison, some may not — and officials admit they have so far given insufficient attention to working out the scale of the threat. They are already working to keep track of jihadists returning from the battlefield in Iraq and Syria, and homegrown radicals who investigators fear could launch an attack at any moment. In France alone, some 500 jihadists handed heavy jail sentences at the beginning of the 2000s are set to be released before 2020 after serving their time, an anti-terror official told AFP. “They represent a potential threat, a worrying threat that we are taking very seriously,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Some 1,500 other French prisoners are suspected to have been radicalised behind bars, not least thanks to contact with these hardened extremists. One of the most infamous examples of authorities losing track of a released jihadist is that of Cherif Kouachi, who along with his brother massacred staff at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris in 2015. Imprisoned from 2005-2006 awaiting trial for his role in a recruitment network that sent jihadists to Iraq, he was convicted in 2008 but walked free as he had already served his time. Kouchai was placed under surveillance and his phone was tapped for several years, but he and his brother Said threw investigators off the scent by using their friends’ phones. Before they attacked Charlie Hebdo in 2015, killing 12 in a hail of Kalashnikov bullets, they had slipped off the radar simply by moving house. Prison, a ‘school for jihad’ Anti-terror officials agree that the same mistakes must not be made again. “We have to have the same attitude towards those leaving prison as we do towards those coming back from Syria,” said Yves Trotignon, a former anti-terror analyst at French foreign intelligence agency DGSE. “For these 500 guys that are going to be coming out, we have no means of evaluating the operational danger they represent,” said Trotignon. “The only solution is to immediately start following their networks. Who is meeting who? Who is telephoning who? In this way you can start to map out their contacts.” He added: “We often say that prison is a school for crime, but it’s also a school for jihad. “It’s the place where those on the fringes get radicalised, where they learn things from those detained earlier.” Britain has some 200 people in prison on terrorism offences as of December, according to interior ministry figures, a number that has been steadily rising in recent years. And Belgium is wrestling with a similar problem. Published in Daily Times, March 20th 2018.