before the slaughter

In the days before the Jihadi murders of 17 people in France last week, the Irish Times had been running one of its typical public awareness campaigns with blissful and groovy abandon, aimed at undermining further Ireland's already collapsing immigration law.
The campaign was two pronged.
First there were articles implying that when Jihadis are deported from Ireland, they often got killed in other jurisdictions, ergo says the Irish Times, none of them should be deported.
The second prong of the Irish Times campaign featured copious articles about a young Muslim man with an Irish passport, who went to Egypt last year and got himself arrested after taking part in riots.
The Irish Times insists that the young Muslim with an Irish passport should be released from jail and returned to Ireland.
Hoo baby.
The Irish Times in fact has been so succesful in this campaign that the young Muslim's legal bills are now actually being paid by me.
That is to say the Irish Ambassador to Egypt has been attending the trial at my expense courtesy of Ireland's corrupt kleptocratic Fine Gael government who I'm postulating are also using my money to pick up his legal bills.
You couldn't make it up.
The young Muslim's Daddy also has an Irish passport and is Imam at something called the Clonskeagh Mosque, which is reputed to be the largest mosque in Ireland.
I disagree with the Irish Times on matters like this.
As does virtually everybody else in the Republic of Ireland outside of the IRA, Al Qaeda and the Irish Times staff room.