Dangerous extremists to be locked up in ‘jihadi jail’ prison wings

DANGEROUS jihadists will be locked up in ‘prisons within prisons’ to stop them brainwashing vulnerable inmates.

Up to 28 Muslim extremists will be caged in specialist ‘separation centres’ in a drive to tackle the growing problem of radicalisation behind bars.

The move, to be announced by ministers today, will prevent them preying on other convicts. Islamist terrorists, hate preachers and criminals radicalised behind bars will be held in the wings at three jails.

The first centre will be up and running at top-security HMP Frankland in Durham within weeks. Two units will follow at other maximum-security jails.

Each will house only a small number of prisoners, making it easier to monitor them and reduce the risk of them plotting atrocities from behind bars.

They are expected to be isolated from the rest of the prison rather than in wings attached to the main jail. There the inmates would be subjected to intensive de-radicalisation programmes.

Prisons minister Sam Gyimah said: ‘Any form of extremism must be defeated wherever it is found, and it is right that we separate those who pose the greatest risk in order to limit their influence over other prisoners. These centres are a crucial part of our wider strategy to help tackle extremism in prisons and ensure the safety and security of our prisons and the public.’

Until now Islamist terrorists have been

‘Crucial part of our strategy’

dispersed around the prison system in the same way that IRA terrorists convicted on the mainland were in the past.

But a review by former prison governor Ian Acheson called for the most dangerous and charismatic offenders to be isolated from the general prison population to prevent them spreading their poison.

His 100-page report suggested a hardcore of jihadist prisoners was already engineering the ‘de facto separation’ of Muslim and non-Muslim prisoners.

The number of radicals has swollen in recent years with jihadis returning from Syria and Iraq, creating a ‘potentially lethal’ problem.

Governors say that in some prisons Muslim gangs force vulnerable inmates to convert to Islam.

There are around 13,000 Muslims in prison with more than 1,000 identified as extremist or vulnerable to radicalisation.

Decisions on which prisoners are placed in the units will be taken by specialist senior staff.

Once in a centre, they will be reviewed by experts every three months and returned to the main jail only if the threat they pose has reduced sufficiently.

It is understood that the first prisoners who will be sent to a unit are yet to be identified. In his review, published last year, Mr Acheson said intelligence showed there was a small number of people ‘whose behaviour is so egregious in relation to proselytising this pernicious ideology, this lethal, nihilistic death cult ideology, which gets magnified inside prison’.

The ex-governor, who looked at specialist units in Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, France and Spain, added: ‘There is, we believe, justification for saying, for those small number of people, they need to be completely incapacitated from being able to proselytise to the rest of the prison population.’

But ministers have been warned that locking up extremists in special ‘jihadi wings’ will be akin to opening up a British Guantanamo Bay. The Prison Officers’ Association claims that isolating hate preachers and Islamist terror offenders would give them credibility and put warders at greater risk of being maimed or murdered.

Earlier this month the Government launched a 100- strong team of counter- terrorism experts to tackle ‘poisonous’ extremism in jails.

Other measures include a ban on extremist literature in prisons and the removal of anyone from communal worship who promotes dangerous views.

It is right that we separate those who pose the greatest risk in order to limit their influence over other prisoners Prisons minister Sam Gyimah