by Danny Shaw, Telegraph
Groups of Muslim inmates use violence and intimidation to ‘overrun’ high-security facilities, leaving authorities powerless to stop them
Crouching on a wall by the sea, in T-shirt, shorts and trainers, a man in his twenties with neatly trimmed dark hair and a bottle in his hand beams at the camera. The sky is blue and the waters are calm. He looks relaxed and content. The reality, though, couldn’t be more different.
The young man grinning in the sun is Baz Hockton – a troubled and dangerous individual with a string of convictions. Not long after this seaside trip, he will be jailed for stabbing two men with a knife.
Then, while in custody in January 2020, having converted to Islam, he carried out the first terrorist attack within the walls of a British prison, at the high-security Whitemoor jail, in Cambridgeshire.
The events of that day, when Hockton and terrorist plotter Brusthom Ziamani strapped on fake suicide belts, armed themselves with makeshift metallic weapons and tried to murder a prison officer, represented a huge wake-up call for the authorities about the threat posed by Islamist extremists in jail.
But, in some quarters at least, not enough appears to have been done to counter it.
And on Saturday, the sense of peril came to the fore once again when Hashem Abedi, one of the Islamist terrorists behind the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, allegedly attacked three prison officers with makeshift weapons and hot cooking oil at HMP Frankland in County Durham. Two officers were left with life-threatening injuries as a result of the rampage.
The incident came just days after reports that Frankland, a high-security prison where Abedi is serving life for 22 murders, has become “overrun” with Islamist gangs who threaten to attack or kill other prisoners if they don’t join up.
HMP Frankland is by no means an isolated case.