Plans for ‘terrorist prison’ would only ‘breed terrorism’

CANBERRA: Terror experts in Australia yesterday raised concerns that plans for a new, high-security prison specifically for those convicted on terror charges would only ‘breed terrorism,’ reports China’’s Xinhua news agency.

After meeting in Hobart for the latest Coalition of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting, some of Australia’’s state and territory leaders floated the idea of a new ‘supermax’ prison to be built specifically to house those found guilty of terror-related charges.

It comes less than a week after a man with links to terror was let out on parole in Melbourne just months before he killed a man and injured three police officers in an Islamic State-claimed terror siege, prompting calls from the prime minister to keep at-risk terror suspects locked up after their sentence has expired.

But the plan for a speciallydesigned terror prison have come under fire from national security and terror experts.

Dr Clark Jones from the Australian National University (ANU) told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that housing the most dangerous terror suspects in one place would only ‘breed terrorism.”

“History has shown us that when you incarcerate terrorist offenders, and I’’m talking about the experience the UK had with the IRA, I think it breeds terrorism,” Jones said.

“It doesn’’t change someone’’s thinking. It doesn’’t create any sorts of positive relationships around inmates. I think it tends to exasperate their feeling of isolation and it creates more of a militant facility.”

Meanwhile former Scotland Yard terror expert Nick O’’Brien told the ABC that locked up foreign fighters who return home aren’t going to be rehabilitated into losing their terrorist ideologies. — Bernama