As Europe’s prisons fill with returning ISIS fighters, officials warn of ‘human bombs’

home if there was no proof they had been fighters or involved in terrorist acts.

Europe has seen fewer deaths from terrorist attacks since the policies went into effect. But now European officials are grappling with a new problem: how to prevent prisons from becoming training and recruitment centers for future terrorists. From Belgium and the Netherlands to Germany and France, law enforcement officials are experimenting with markedly different approaches to the problem, including reeducation programs and the near-total isolation of the most radicalized inmates. The efforts are a race against time, as many of the jailed returnees will regain their freedom in less than two years.

“They come to the end of their sentence, and we have no choice but to release them,” said a Belgian official who helps supervise the treatment of Islamist inmates in that country’s largest prisons. The official, like several others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern that former inmates might target them.

“Some of them,” the official said, “could be human bombs.”

Ittre Prison, a walled, high-security complex southwest of Brussels, is one of Belgium’s most notorious, one-time home to convicted child molester and murderer Marc Dutroux and a host of organized crime figures. In 2007, it was the site of a spectacular escape by Nordin Benallal, Belgium’s “jailbreak king,” who used a helicopter crash on the prison’s grounds as a diversion that allowed him to escape.

Today, Ittre is known as one of two Belgian prisons with special isolation units for dealing with the most radical of the country’s jailed Islamists. Called Deradex, the unit is home to men regarded by Belgian officials as particularly dangerous. As of last month, Ittre’s Deradex section held 13.

The inmates in the section are allowed to socialize Stefan Schurmann, an officer at JVA Frankfurt prison, stands by one of the doors.

with others within the isolation unit only during certain hours and under close supervision. Isolation is, in fact, the essential ingredient in Belgium’s new

approach for dealing with radicalized prisoners.