July 28, 2018

BRUSSELS — A few months before his killing rampage, convicted robber and prison inmate Benjamin Herman had a jailhouse conversion of a sort. A white suburban teen and a nominal Catholic when he was first incarcerated, he emerged in late May as an avowed Islamist who would murder three people within hours of gaining freedom on a work-release program.

Herman fatally stabbed two female police officers during his hour-long attack in the Belgian city of Liege, and then used one of their pistols to kill a passing motorist. Shouting “Allahu akbar,” he seized a hostage and wounded two more officers before being shot dead in a gun battle with police.

Afterward, as the facts about the killings came to light, one biographical detail stood out: Herman, a product of Belgium’s French-speaking middle class, had come under the sway of a group of radical Islamist inmates in prison.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/europe-isis-prisons/?utm_term=.d0e363c70747