We didn't need terrorist Hashem Abedi’s alleged ferocious, homicidal attack on three prison officers to know that the 28-year-old is one of the most dangerous prisoners in Britain. His original crime – aiding and abetting his brother’s suicide bombing of innocent, fun-loving kids at Manchester Arena – is proof enough of that. But Abedi’s implacable hostility to this country and everything it stands for is now, perforce, confined to his immediate and permanent surroundings – prison.
His options are limited. But they are still options. Abedi already has form for attacking the hated authority figures charged with keeping him confined. Some years ago Abedi violently attacked two guards while he was being detained in Belmarsh prison. So, far from showing a shred of remorse for the hideous atrocity that got him jailed for life, that vicious assault made it crystal clear that for Abedi, the war against this country remains as active as he can make it.
That attack got a few more notional years added to his sentence. But this is a fanatic with nothing to lose. So he bided his time. And last week he struck again.
Secreting mini-packets of butter – the kind you get in hotel rooms – Abedi melted them down in the prison kitchen at HMP Frankland, launched the boiling goo in his guards’ faces, and then stabbed them with a ten-inch knife he’d somehow forged from a metal baking tray.
All this beggars belief. Abedi should have been handled like a scorpion, with (metaphorical) tongs, at arm’s length. No QUESTION of him being allowed access to a kitchen – a ready source of heat, metal, and malign opportunity.
One former US supermax prison official put it succinctly in an online posting. “Are you Brits NUTS? If you’d caught Bin Laden, would you have let him use the jail kitchen? Do you watch TV with a rattlesnake in your dressing gown pocket? JEEZ, guys!”
But last word to former UK prison governor Ian Acheson. “We don’t have the death penalty so the only alternative [for Abedi] is extreme custody. If that turns him mad, so be it.”
