Streatham terror attack: More dangerous terrorists being released from UK prisons than returning from Syria, former terror police chief says
Attack comes after repeated warnings that terrorists are not being deradicalised in British prisons
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More dangerous people are being released from British prisons with terror convictions than returning from fighting for Isis in Syria, the former head of UK counterterror police has said.
Sir Mark Rowley issued the warning after a known extremist launched a knife attack in Streatham just days after being freed from jail.
Sudesh Amman, an Isis supporter, started the rampage in front of undercover police officers who were following him as part of a surveillance operation.
The 20-year-old was shot dead, while wearing a fake suicide vest, and two victims he stabbed survived.
It was the third terror attack in just over two months to be carried out by a convicted terrorist in Britain, following stabbings at Fishmongers’ Hall and inside HMP Whitemoor.
Sir Mark, who led British counterterror police until March 2018, said prisons needed to “get a grip” on rehabilitation.
“I remember being asked by MPs a few years ago when I was in post about the threat of returning jihadis from Syria, which is a concern,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“I remember saying at the time that there will be more dangerous people on the streets of the UK in the next few years coming out of UK prisons with terrorist convictions, than returning from Syria. Sadly that seems to be what’s happening at the moment.”
Usman Khan, who was shot dead on London Bridge after murdering two people in November, had also served a prison sentence for terror offences while jailed attack plotter Brusthom Ziamani allegedly launched an attack inside jail last month.
There are currently more than 200 people jailed for terror offences in Britain, but up to 800 have been flagged as extremists and prison officers fear the real number is far higher.
Recent cases have shown that terrorists are able to network and radicalise others inside prisons, and may be faking apparent compliance with deradicalisation schemes.
The government recently announced a package of new terror measures including lie detector tests for released terrorists and changes to make them serve longer in jail.
But there are mounting fears that imprisoning extremists could actually be increasing the risk they pose, with a judge handing a man who encouraged far-right terror attacks a community sentence last week partly because he would be “liable to radicalisation” in prison and made more dangerous.
Amman's, mother Haleema Faraz Khan, told Sky News that he was a “nice, polite boy” who had seemed “normal” when she visited him at his probation hostel on Thursday.
She said he had become more religious since being in prison, and that she believed he had been radicalised while in HMP Belmarsh.
Concerns have frequently been raised about terrorist networking inside the prison, where a trial recently heard the Buckingham Palace sword attacker and Parsons Green bomber met.
Ms Khan also said that Amman, the eldest of her five sons, had also developed extreme views after looking at Islamist material online.
“He became more religious inside prison, that's where I think he became radicalised,” she added.
“He was watching and listening to things online which brainwashed him.”
His 2018 trial heard that he had started collecting terrorist material online at the age of 17 and was active on Telegram - then Isis's main platform.
Sir Mark said he could “see the case” for handing all terror offenders indeterminate sentence that would require them to be risk-assessed before release, rather than released automatically like Amman.
But he said the move would have to be accompanied by strengthened deradicalisation programmes, adding: “We need to be as equally aggressive about trying to help people turn their lives around as we are determined to protect the public.”
A former prison governor who carried out a government-commissioned review of Islamist extremism inside British prisons in 2016 said we “absolutely cannot go on like this”.
Ian Acheson described the Streatham attack as the “dismal end of a clearly broken risk management and intervention process that starts off in prison custody”.
He questioned the effectiveness of existing deradicalisation schemes and called for improved theological interventions.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said the Streatham stabbing like the Fishmongers’ Hall attack had been “both foreseeable and preventable”.
“These were men convicted of terrorist related offences and I have been frustrated for some time about changes to the law in 2012 which took away from judges the power they used to have to give a sentence to protect the public - an indeterminate sentence - and to make sure people weren't released unless we knew they were no longer a danger,” he added.
Whitehall sources said Amman had been released from prison days before the attack after serving half of his sentence for collecting and distributing terrorist material.
“There had been concerns when he was in prison,” a source said. “There was nothing that could be done to keep him behind bars under existing laws, hence why he was under surveillance and strict licence conditions.”
Amman was handed a three year and four month sentence in December 2018 for disseminating terrorist material and collecting information useful for terror attacks after police found a stash of bomb-making manuals and other propaganda.
Then 18, he had declared his own wish to carry out a terror attack and had stockpiled a combat knife, air gun and black flag at his family home in London.
At the top of a list of Amman's “life goals” was dying a martyr and going to Jannah - the afterlife.
In online chats, Amman told his girlfriend and a friend of his hatred for “kuffars” (non-believers), his allegiance to Isis and his wish to carry out a terror attack.
In one message he even encouraged his girlfriend to behead her own “kuffar parents”, and posted al-Qaeda propaganda to a family WhatsApp group including children as young as 11.
Prosecutors said he had a “fascination with conducting an attack focused on using a knife”.
Amman was released after serving half of his jail sentence, after a total of 20 months in prison since his arrest in May 2018.