Since the attacks in Brussels, many initiatives have been carried out to try to deradicalize young people who have been sensitive to the calls of jihad. This is the case of Caprev. It was through this help center that Yassine Mahi was followed. The director of the center agrees to speak for RTL INFO. According to her, de-radicalizing a person is very difficult, if not impossible.
It is an institution that works in the shadows behind prison walls, in the homes of radicalized people or in discreet offices. The deputy director of the support center for people affected by purple extremism receives us to tell us first of all her dismay. The staff closely followed Yassine Mahi, the author of the stabbing attack once morest the two police officers in Schaerbeek.
“I can’t help thinking it’s Friday and this funeral is taking place. Our whole administration is shaken. We can’t just say, ‘We did what we might do. , we did our job’. We can’t stop there. We are a public service and the majority of our staff is terribly committed to their job. So that requires questioning”, says Marie-Nathalie D’hoop, deputy director general of CAPREV (help center for radicalized people and violent extremists).
Could the tragedy have been avoided? A question that keeps coming back to the ears of staff made up of criminologists, educators and psychologists. These experts must accompany people with fragile mental health. This is obviously the case of Yassine Mahi.
We are not robots, therefore we are not programmable
“When it comes to people who have a violent potential or who are weakened by a mental health problem, it is clear that we are working even more in troubled waters. I cannot say whether, at this stage here, if something might have been avoided. But we can’t stop there. And we have to question ourselves on the areas of improvement. Would these areas have avoided something? I don’t know. “Would it have prevented that at another time, there is a passage to the act? I don’t know, but I challenge anyone to know. We stay with human nature, we are not robots. So we are not programmable and not deprogrammable”, specifies the deputy director of Caprev.
Is the accompaniment of an extremist effective? Unquestionably, according to this public body, created in 2017 following the attacks in Paris and Brussels. But is a potentially deradicalized person no longer dangerous to society? “We can’t afford this kind of thinking. When we talk regarding human nature and support, we can only work brick by brick. We are never safe from the collapse of the building”argues Marie-Nathalie D’hoop.
Among the 70 people currently followed by this organization of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, there are religious and political extremists, but also conspiracy activists: a new type of radicalism and a new challenge for the staff.
