Al-Qaeda to recruit criminals for holy war: Report

According to a report in The Sunday Times, the Britain’s Ministry of Justice has begun a programme to persuade convicted terrorists to give up their cause.

It is also trying to protect vulnerable Muslim inmates from violent extremists. The radicalisation is being led by some of the estimated 150 terrorist prisoners in England and Wales.

The British daily said the extremists linked to al-Qaeda planned to recruit 800 ‘Muslim criminals’ for their ‘holy war’ against the UK even as the government has put in place a unit to tackle “the risks of extremism and radicalism in prison.”

The number of Muslim inmates has grown over the past decade to more than 10 per cent of the jail population. Most are young men, typically petty criminals serving two or three year sentences for crimes such as burglary, theft, drug dealing or fraud, the report said.

One of the most notorious al-Qaeda terrorists, Richard Reid, the ‘shoe bomber’ who was convicted of trying to blow up a transatlantic jet in 2001 with explosives in his trainers, had served time as a petty crook before being radicalised.