UK Will Segregate Imprisoned Jihad Terrorists

At last, a bit of common sense. It has finally come to the attention of the British government that terrorists in prison have been able to “radicalize” fellow Muslims – that is, make ordinary Muslims into fanatical Muslims – and that the way to prevent this is to establish special prison units, within a larger prison, where terrorists can be kept separate from the general prison population. A report on this development is here: “Can the UK’s First Terrorist Prison Unit Succeed?,” by Patrick Dunleavy, Algemeiner, February 15, 2022:

Recent news reports from the United Kingdom are heralding the reinvigoration of a prison unit specifically designed for terrorists.

Officials hope that, by creating a specialized prison-within-a-prison, they can reduce the threat of radicalization among the general prison population. The prison, which is referred to as a “Separation Centre,” will attempt to isolate inmates and control their communications.

The threat posed by incarcerated terrorists goes well beyond their specific crimes, said UK Justice Secretary Dominic Raab. “Separation Centers are critical to isolating the most radical offenders, who seek to poison the minds of other prisoners with their perverse ideologies.”

It’s not a “perverse ideology” that the “most radical prisoners” try to spread. It’s orthodox Islam, held fast to by people who are fanatical in their faith, and determined to carry out its commands, above all the jihadist verses that tell Believers to “fight” and to “kill” and to “smite at the necks of” and to “strike terror in the hearts of” Infidels. That many Muslims do not act on these Qur’anic commands is fortunate, but Dominic Raab should learn the unhappy truth about what Islam – and not some “perverse ideology” – teaches.

Not every convicted terrorist may go to such a center. Officials will consider the risk posed by the inmate along with classified intelligence provided by security services.

“The UK [according to Dominic Raab] has been plagued in recent years by terror attacks committed by people who became radicalized in prison, or who feigned compliance with de-radicalization programs while in the general prison system.”

The mixing of fanatical Muslims with the general prison population provides a literally captive audience for those fanatics, who are able to use the texts and teachings of Islam to turn fellow Muslim prisoners into fanatics willing to kill. At the same time, these terrorist prisoners find it possible to convert some non-Muslims into Muslims, and then into fanatical Muslims, as well.

Now their proselytizing task will be much more difficult, because of the policy of segregating the fanatics in small separate prison units (“separation centers”) within a larger prison.

These specialized terrorist prison units have actually been in existence for several years, with one at HMP Frankland, Woodhill, and Full Sutton. However they were all but empty due to the fear of lawsuits by prisoner rights advocates. Recent changes, both in physical design and policy, were undertaken to make the prisons more effective as well as to address potential complaints.

Currently there are only 10 terrorists housed in the separation centers, even though the UK has more than 220 terrorists in custody.

It is scandalous that there are still only 10 terrorists in separate prison units, out of a total population of 220 imprisoned terrorists. The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, but this is absurd. How long does it take to move these 220 terrorists into a separate unit where they can no longer have any contact with the other prisoners, Muslim and non-Muslim?

The new process makes it easier for administrators to transfer inmates into the centers while also allowing terrorists to be placed in a separation center for at least two years. In the existing system, inmates are reviewed every three months.

Why put them in a separation center “for at least two years.” Why not for the full length of their sentence? Is there any reason to think that terrorists genuinely change their minds and, while continuing to be Muslims, are no longer dangerous to the society of Infidels? Shouldn’t the experience of having so many fanatics being released, after they seemed outwardly to have changed — but then then went right back to terrorism — have taught us to be wary about the premature release of such prisoners?

Human rights advocates had previously accused the centers of violating an inmate’s right to socialize, visit with relatives, and have a private life.

Too bad. That’s the whole point of segregating terrorists in prison, to keep them away from others. Their so-called “right to socialize” has never been recognized as an inalienable right, else “solitary confinement” would not have been so widely used. In any case, these terrorists in special units within a prison can still socialize with the other imprisoned terrorists. Surely they will have a lot to talk about. Nor are they prevented from having visits from relatives, like other prisoners. And this claim that they won’t have “a private life” is preposterous; that’s what happens when you are in prison: you no longer have a private life. That is something you give up. The most dangerous prisoners, like these terrorist fanatics, are being watched by CCTV cameras and prison guards round the clock.

Strange as that sounds, the outlandish demand that terrorists should be able to socialize is not a novel idea. Several years back, attorneys for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, better known as the “Underwear Bomber,” claimed that he was prohibited” from having any communication whatsoever with more than 7.5 billion people, the vast majority of people on the planet.”…

The absurd claim that it was unjust that the Underwear Bomber could no longer communicate “with all 7.5. billion people on the plant” was rejected by the court. He had been sentenced to solitary confinement; that’s the whole point of such a sentence – you no longer are able to talk with anyone save with visiting relatives and with the guards.

Worry about the Underwear Bomber’s communications with the outside world are well-founded. It should be noted that El-Sayyid Nosair used both the inmate telephone system and the visitation program in Attica state prison to communicate with co-conspirators plotting to bomb the World Trade Center and other New York landmarks in 1993. Mohammed Salameh, also convicted in the 1993 bombing, was able to smuggle letters out of the Federal SuperMax Prison to Islamic terrorist Mohamed Achraf. Achraf was one of the architects in the 2004 Madrid train bombing that killed 191 people and wounded almost 2,000. That’s surely enough to justify the Underwear Bomber’s solitary confinement.

Prison walls are sometimes porous and inmates have been known to use the very privileges given them to continue running criminal organizations while incarcerated. The threat is greater with incarcerated terrorists. Abulmutallab, admittedly, gives no evidence of being anything more than a not-very-intelligent lowly foot-soldier in the war against the Infidels.

Noted counter-terrorism expert Ian Acheson, a former UK prison governor, pointed to this case as an example of the UK’s failure to accurately assess the security risks posed by incarcerated terrorists.

Acheson said it was imperative to “isolate people who are determined to continue proselytizing hateful ideologies … [and] separate the hate preacher from their potential audience.”

Acheson simply can’t bring himself to say “proselytizing for a fanatical faith” or “proselytizing for a version of Islam at its most fanatical.” He prefers to keep us guessing by referring to “hateful ideologies.”

The separation centers are designed to house all convicted terrorists, including right wing extremists, though currently only Islamist radicals are housed there.

This needs to be corrected. These “right-wing extremists” should be kept apart from fanatical Muslims. “Right-wing extremists,” people of fragile mental health and usually of low intelligence, are most vulnerable to switching from one fanaticism to another; there are many cases of prisoners, initially “far-right,” who in prison became converts to Islam. Some of them did so in order to join the “largest prison gang” (Muslims) out of fears for their personal safety. Others did so because they shared certain core beliefs with Islam – a hatred for liberal democracy, a desire to submit to a cause that would provide them with a Compleat Guide to Living and, of course, both “right-wing extremists” and Muslim fanatics display an obsessive antisemitism. Islam, like the beliefs of the far-right, offers an immediate brotherhood of fellow believers, and little need, to think for oneself, but only to “submit” to authority.

Some may remember the case of Devon Arthurs, a former neo-Nazi who killed his friends for “disrespecting Islam.” The German politician Arthur Wagner was a leading member of the “right-wing” and “anti-immigrant” Alternativ fur Deutschland Party until he converted to Islam. Arnoud van Doorn, a member of Geert Wilders’s Dutch Freedom Party — which because it is anti-Islam is always described as a “far-right” party — left it in 2011, converted to Islam in 2012, and soon after made hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. In 2014, Maxence Buttey, a local councillor for the National Front (FN), France’s analogous far-right party, converted to Islam. Far-right prisoners are more likely to become Muslims than are common, criminals.

It’s a good beginning in the UK, to have a prison-within-the-prison for jailed terrorists. But three things need to be fixed. First, it is dangerous to place extreme right-wingers, including neo-Nazis, in the same prison units as Muslim terrorists. Second, Muslim prisoners, even if not “extremists,” should be kept apart from the non-Muslim prisoners. What now happens is that in the prisons of Western Europe, including the U.K. Muslims constitute the strongest gang. In order to protect themselves while in prison, non-Muslims may convert superficially – they need only recite the “Shehada” — in order to join that “strongest gang.” Third, ideally, by housing “extremist” Muslims in different prisons rather than in different “units” within the same prison, the task of separating “extremist Muslims” not only from non-Muslims but also from Muslims who are less observant or fanatical, will be made much easier.

This won’t end the conversion problem — conversions will still go on outside the prison setting — but will make it harder for Muslim prisoners to threaten or cajole non-Muslims into embracing Islam, and harder, too, to “radicalize” normal Muslims. And keeping down the number of converts to Islam, “radical” or not, should be understood, by the farseeing, as one of the most important of state interests.