France will release some 450 radical Islamic extremists from prison by the end of next year including 50 considered terror threats.
“We have about 500 detainees who are radicalised as Islamist terrorists, out of those 500 there will be about 20 of them coming out this year, and then about 30 next year,” France’s Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet confirmed.
The minister added that around 30 per cent of the current radicalised prison population, some 450 people, were also set to be put back on the streets by the end of next year, Le Figaro reports.
“The government is bent on monitoring these people,” Ms. Belloubet said. “It starts in detention, these people are evaluated, they are then placed in places of detention that correspond to their level of dangerousness,” she said and added that security agencies aided by intelligence already gathered in prison will monitor the radicalised Islamic extremists once they are set free.
“We are following them step by step,” she said.
In 2016, a report estimated there to be at least 8,250 radical Islamic extremists across the country, a number that had doubled from the number of radicals in 2015.
A study, conducted by the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri) and released in March of this year profiled the average radicalised Muslim claiming them to be most likely a young man in his 20s from a migrant background and having grown up in one of the country’s migrant-populated suburbs and involved in petty crime.
Radicalisation in prisons has become a major issue in France with some labelling them “terrorist universities”.
Prison has also not stopped some Islamists from communicating with terror groups like the Islamic State or plotting terror attacks to be carried out upon their release.
Last October, two inmates of Fresnes prison were caught using smuggled mobile phones to communicate with Islamic State and were plotting terror attacks from their cells.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com