Jailing terrorists for longer could be a problem – not a solution

Drive to jail terrorists for longer ignores radicalisation and networking inside prisons, Lizzie Dearden writes

Police forensic officers on Streatham High Road in south London after Sudesh Amman stabbed two bystanders in February (AFP)

The UK has been hit by three alleged terror attacks carried out by convicted terrorists in the past six months – but one is being erased from government policy.

The first was at Fishmongers’ Hall on 29 November, where former attack plotter Usman Khan murdered two people at a rehabilitation conference before being shot dead by police on London Bridge.

The second was inside the high security HMP Whitemoor prison on 9 January, when a man jailed for plotting to behead a British soldier allegedly attacked a guard with another inmate. Like Khan, the 2017 London Bridge attackers and other Isis-inspired terrorists, they were both wearing fake suicide belts.