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The Gerasdorf youth facility in Austria currently locks up more than 80 murderers, robbers, rapists and burglars from 14 nations and half of them are Muslim.

The fact that the youth prison, located just outside the Austrian capital of Vienna, is now 50% filled with Muslim offenders has prompted prison governor Margitta Essenther to turn part of the jail into an official mosque.

The Muslims include young men from Afghanistan, Chechens, Turks and North Africans. The next largest group is Christians who make up 40% of the prisoners.

(Image: CEN)

But this was regarded as unfair by the governor given that less than half of the inmates at the jail, which includes a swimming pool, football field, special outdoor grill area and fitness room, were Christian.

To cater for the Muslim inmates the mosque plan has now been unveiled.

Essenther said: "We are in the middle of the planning phase, and it will be located in a building."

The construction of the prison mosque is scheduled for the beginning of 2018, the completion is planned for the spring of 2019.

(Image: CEN)

The prison chief does not see any problems for possible radicalisation of prisoners.

She said: "My deputy Thomas Binder is also a contact for the state intelligence agency, he knows all the hidden and questionable ISIS marks and symbols."

Currently, three teenagers linked with a terrorism background sit in Gerasdorf, down from a peak of six teenagers just before Christmas.

(Image: CEN) (Image: CEN)

Yet radicalisation in prison is not unheard of in Austria. The alleged mastermind behind a children's ISIS terror cell, the 17-year-old Austro-Albanian Lorenz K., recently told Austrian investigators he had been radicalised in prison.

He said a boy named Ahmed from Dagestan gave him a Quran in a youth detention centre, after which Lorenz converted to Islam.

When Lorenz K. was out of youth prison, he frequently visited mosques and even married a Muslim acquaintance he had met over the internet, despite being a minor. He was arrested in January together with a 12-year-old on suspicion of having planned a terrorist attack.