AFTER nightfall one Saturday in January 2015, Bilal Taghi set off on a road trip with two friends, his wife and their infant child. They left their home town of Trappes, near Paris, bound for a wedding in Turkey, they said. About 400km (250 miles) from the border with Syria, where they hoped to join Islamic State (IS), their car overturned. Arrested in Turkey, they were expelled to France and convicted earlier this year of association with planned terrorist activities. Mr Taghi, a 24-year-old French citizen, was jailed in a special unit at a prison in Osny, near Paris, set up to isolate detainees linked to terrorism.
Earlier this month, Mr Taghi was taken from his cell at Osny for a routine exercise session. Hidden under a towel, he clutched a sharp metal rod, fashioned from his cell window. Summoned by a prison guard, the inmate turned on him, stabbing him nine times, and then slashed a second guard in the face and arm; both survived.
With all of the recent terrorist attacks in France—most recently a failed plot to blow up a car near Notre-Dame cathedral—the bloody attack in Osny barely made the news. Yet it exposed a fraught…
