Jihadi suspected of prison terrorist attack ran sharia courts in his cell
A CONVICTED terrorist suspected of carrying out the first jihadist attack on prison staff in British history is believed to have run a sharia court behind bars.
Brusthom Ziamani, 24, and a fellow prisoner allegedly attacked a prison officer at HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire on Thursday.
The pair, who were wearing fake suicide vests and shouting ‘Allahu Akbar [God is Great]’, are accused of slashing the staff member with improvised bladed weapons before being restrained by four other officers who were also injured.
The injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.
Ziamani and his fellow attacker – a Muslim convert who has not been identified – have not yet been charged with any offence but are under investigation by counterterrorist detectives. Last night, a former prisoner who spent time in both Whitemoor and HMP Woodhill with Ziamani, said he was fond of peddling extremism inside prison, as well as converting others to radical Islam. The ex-prisoner, a white convert now out on parole who has turned his back on extremist ideology, told the Daily Telegraph: ‘ When I arrived in prison I was quickly met by Ziamani and allowed into his inner circle. He once tried to organise a coup against the prison system. He would also hold sharia courts in his prison cell for infractions such as drinking.’
Ziamani was an acolyte of hate preacher Anjem Choudary and may have known Usman Khan, the London Bridge attacker and former Whitemoor inmate who killed two people last year in a knife attack.
A former Jehovah’s Witness, Ziamani began plotting a terror attack just weeks after being radicalised in 2014. He was jailed for 22 years in 2015 for a plot to behead a British soldier in London in an attack that would have echoed the horrific murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013.
HMP Whitemoor has a history of problems with extremism, and was the subject of a damning report in 2011, which found a Muslim gang culture pervading across the prison allowing extremist converts to convert and radicalise other inmates.
Dr Paul Stott, an expert in radicalisation at think-tank the Henry Jackson Society, said: ‘There are problems with Muslim gangs converting vulnerable inmates and using them to punish others. I think there are sharia cells in other prisons.’
Last night, the Prison Officers’ Association said that attacks on staff had reached an ‘epidemic level’ inside jails in England and Wales with more than 30 attacks against prison staff every day.
Last night, there were reports of an attack at HMP Bristol where five members of staff were injured.