I’ll behead guards but I want my human rights
A JAILED jihadi was put in segregation for plotting to behead prison guards – but a judge has ruled the move breached his human rights.
Nadir Syed, 24, was placed in isolation at the top-security Woodhill jail after he led other Muslim inmates in chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is Great’), bangingon cell doors and threatening to decapitate warders. Documents seen by The Mail on Sunday reveal that staff were warned not to be left alone with him to ‘prevent the risk of hostage-taking’, while Syed had also claimed he would ‘radicalise the whole unit’ in another prison.
But Syed, serving a life sentence for planning to behead a poppy-seller in a Lee Rigby-style attack, successfully sued the Ministry of Justice after he was placed in a unit by himself.
The astonishing revelation comes just two days after the Government announced a flagship policy to tackle radicalisation behind bars, with special ‘prisons within prisons’ being set up this summer to hold the most dangerous extremists.
Ministers are taking the drastic step amid growing concern that hundreds of vulnerable inmates are at risk of having-their minds warped by extremists and being turned into terrorists when they are released.
Last night Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley who sits on the Justice Select Committee, said: ‘It’s all right for the judge respecting the human rights of the prisoner, but what about the human rights of the prison staff he was threatening to behead? The reason why so many people have lost faith in the justice system is because you get ridiculous decisions like that.’
He added: ‘I welcome the new separation centres for extremist prisoners because they often target other, more vulnerable prisoners and radicalise them. But there is a risk that extremist inmates will launch legal action against the new jails on human rights grounds, and a judge might rule in their favour and undermine the whole thing.’
Syed, from Hounslow, West London, is serving life for plotting to behead a poppy-seller on Remembrance Sunday with a 12in kitchen knife, inspired by the killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby on the streets of London four years ago. When he was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years last year, Syed was told he may never be released to protect the public.
But chillingly, he remains intent on carrying out a beheading, even while locked up in Britain’s most secure institutions.
According to court documents, the authorities claim that while he was on remand before his trial began, Syed had ‘commented that, if he were convicted (as he was in December 2015), he would carry out the act that he was in prison for (that is, the act of preparing for an act of terrorism by acquiring a knife in order to kill, and behead, a person)’.
Just weeks after he was found guilty of preparation of terrorist acts, he was heard making murderous threats at Category A Woodhill jail in Buckinghamshire. ‘On the morning-of January 7, 2016, there were reports that the claimant was part of a group of prisoners who were hitting cell doors, stating that officers oppressed Muslims, shouting Allahu Akbar and uttering threats of beheading,’ according to the High Court judgment. When a guard entered Syed’s cell, the prisoner said that if officers ‘violated one [Muslim] brother, they violate all’, making more threats to behead prison staff all morning.
He then tried to get one particular officer to come into his cell, which the judge concluded was ‘an aggressive act and, indeed, reflects the same kind of hostility that had led to the act resulting in his conviction’. Syed was put in a segregation cell shortly afterwards, and weeks later was placed in a secure wing called the Central Managing ChallengingBehaviour Unit because of the threat he posed to guards.
A Prison Service assessment of him said: ‘Mr Syed has a lot of intelligence stating that he has intentions to take staff hostage and behead them.’
Yet despite the danger Syed posed to staff, a High Court judge has ruled that Woodhill prison breached his human rights by locking him in the isolation unit.
Mr Justice Lewis agreed that Syed’s confinement was unlawful because the prison authorities did not notify him beforehand that he was to be placed in the unit, and thereby give him an opportunity to respond.