Men don’t need ideology to be psychopathic sadists, writes Dalrymple, but it may help.
Against the interpretation of Bourhan Hraichie’s attack on Michael O’Keefe
as a manifestation of purely personal sadism is his previously expressed support for the Islamic State — a case of elective affinity, no doubt.
There is also the fact that
no one in the cells nearest to Hraichie called the guards on their emergency bells for fear of retaliation by Hraichie and his acolytes.
In other words,
there was a powerful group of prisoners in the jail who thought and felt as Hraichie did, or would at least obey his orders. The Islamists are thus a kind of prison Mafia, with their own version of omertà.