From Prison to Jihad

The Fellowship | March 31, 2017

Aerial view of several cars and medics gathered on the street. — From Prison to Jihad

Writing in the Algemeiner, Patrick Dunleavy examines the background of Khalid Masood, the terrorist who perpetrated the March 22 attack in London – and finds that he took a path familiar to Islamist terrorists in Great Britain and beyond:

The susceptibility of British inmates to Islamist radicalization is well documented. Extremist literature, like ISIS’s Inspire magazine, is present at UK jails, and so are convicted terrorists who try to solicit new recruits.

The vast majority of imprisoned terrorists refuse to attend any de-radicalization programs, which led former Scotland Yard Counter Terrorism Commander Richard Walton to tell Sky News that “very few” inmates convicted of ISIS-related crimes had been reformed. Other critics go even further, noting “that many ‘deradicalization’ programs established by Western governments have been fraught with repeated and embarrassing failures.”