London, Nov 15 (Inditop.com) Convicted terrorists in British high-security prisons are smuggling out propaganda for the internet and finding recruits, the Sunday Times reported.
The paper quoted a report by Quilliam, a think tank funded by the British home ministry as saying “mismanagement” by prison authorities is helping Al Qaeda gain recruits and risks “strengthening jihadist movements”.
Among dangerous terrorists who have smuggled out documents is Abu Qatada, Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe, who has published fatwas on the internet from Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire.
His fatwas call for holy war and the murder of moderate Muslims, the report says.
The Sunday Times said Abu Doha, said to be Al Qaeda’s main recruiter in Europe, has taken courses in Belmarsh prison in London, enabling him to mentor other inmates.
Abu Hamza, jailed in 2006 for inciting murder, has preached radical sermons to followers in his Belmarsh cell and Rachid Ramda, the Algerian leader of a Paris Metro bomb plot, led Friday prayers in the same jail, it said.
Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, shadow security minister of the opposition Conservative Party, said British prisons risked becoming “incubators of extremism”.
“Islamist extremists are running rings around a Prison Service which often seems clueless about the nature of the extremist threat. If this situation is not tackled, British prisons risk becoming universities of terror,” said the author of the Quilliam report, James Brandon, who was kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq in 2004.
