Convert or get hurt: How Islamist gangs are terrorising staff in high-security prisons and forcing non-Muslim inmates to join their ranks for ‘protection’ as the authorities lose control

For an insight into the current state of the British penal system, the case of Denny De Silva is as instructive as it is worrying.

A drug-dealing murderer, on being jailed in 2016 he converted to Islam and ever since has been a thoroughly disruptive presence wherever he has been locked up.

From battering inmates who don’t share his beliefs, to smuggling in mobile phones to disseminate ‘graphic and grotesque’ Islamic State material, the 32-year-old is described as an ‘extremist enforcer’ who ‘influences and incites’ other Muslim prisoners wherever he goes.

And so, in 2023, the decision was made to move him into a Separation Centre (SC).

The units, each of which hold fewer than ten men, were established at three high-security prisons in response to the growing threat posed by Islamic extremists and terrorists in British jails.

By creating ‘prisons within prisons’ the idea was to prevent inmates who have refused attempts to deradicalise from spreading their toxic message to other inmates.

Given his track record, the decision to move De Silva would seem to have been eminently sensible. Not that he agreed.

As well as demanding to go back on a normal wing, the career criminal launched a legally aided court battle in which he claimed his human rights had been breached. 

So what privations did De Silva suffer?

From what emerged in his High Court hearing, the details of which are revealed today by the Mail for the first time, the unit he was detained in was hardly Guantanamo Bay.

Accepting that he still had access to the gym and library, he complained his time there was ‘limited’ – as was his use of a computer.

He was also unhappy with educational opportunities that consisted of ‘doing a quiz or watching a documentary’ – rather than sitting the GCSE English exam that he apparently wanted to do.

And that wasn’t all. Timetabled ‘nutrition sessions’ didn’t take place – instead he was given healthy-eating leaflets to read – while cooking classes failed to meet his expectations.

Instead of hands-on demonstrations, they involved prisoners ‘being given a recipe and ingredients to cook on their own’.

Also getting the thumbs down were gardening lessons that involved ‘watering a few tomato plants’ and work opportunities that were limited to cleaning and painting.

De Silva’s lawyers argued in court that he didn’t deserve to be held in such conditions and that the prison governors hadn’t given him a chance to argue his case. 

They also claimed that it was bad for his mental health – causing his ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’ to get worse.

And, incredible though it may seem, De Silva won his claim for judicial review.

Earlier this year a judge found that the prisoner’s rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) had been breached.

As a result, he is now understood to be back on a normal wing – and could even be in line for financial compensation.

On its own, the De Silva case is extraordinary enough.

But against the backdrop of what unfolded last weekend in the Separation Centre at HMP Frankland – where De Silva was himself held in 2023 – it reinforces concerns that, when it comes to managing Britain’s most dangerous prisoners, something has gone very, very wrong.

On Saturday morning, three prison guards working in the unit at the Durham jail were hospitalised after being attacked by Hashem Abedi, one of Britain’s most dangerous prisoners.

The 28-year-old is serving a 55-year sentence for assisting his brother’s suicide bomb attack on Manchester Arena which killed 22 people, many of them children.

The Islamist, who had previously attacked another officer at a different prison, threw hot cooking oil over the officers before stabbing them with homemade weapons.

Like De Silva, Abedi had access to a kitchen.

It was there he is understood to have fashioned two 20cm-blades from baking trays, as well as heating a pan of oil which he threw at the officers.

One male officer was then stabbed in the neck, with the blade coming close to severing an artery. Another male officer was stabbed at least five times in the back, puncturing a lung.

One of their female colleagues was also injured.

Counter-terror police are investigating how the attack was planned. One line of enquiry is said to focus on what role, if any, notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary played in the ‘ambush’.

Prison officers believe Choudary – described as the ‘Daddy’ of the SC in Frankland where he is serving 28 years, and one of the first extremists to have been placed in the centre in 2017 – might have encouraged Abedi to carry out the attack.

This week recordings of Choudary appearing to mock the system whereby extremists are segregated emerged. In one from 2022, Choudary explained how separation centres actually benefit extremist inmates.

‘Practising Muslims who go to prison want to spend their time with fellow Muslims, and they don’t want to be constantly looking over their shoulder,’ he said. ‘This creates an ideal scenario for them – being placed with like-minded individuals – where they can collectively ignore the prison infrastructure entirely.’

News of the attack and how it happened prompted widespread anger among prison staff, politicians and those caught up in the Manchester bomb. Survivor Martin Hibbert condemned it as a ‘catastrophic failure’ of basic prison security.

Other victims’ families called for Abedi to be placed in solitary confinement amid calls for the ‘appeasement’ of jailed terrorists to stop.

It is a move endorsed by Ian Acheson, a former prison governor whose 2016 review of Islamist extremism led to the introduction of SCs. He believes Abedi should be kept in total isolation, even if it ‘turns him mad’.

Speaking to the Mail last night, he said: ‘We have to be blunt here. Some people cannot be redeemed and they will not stop as a threat to staff until they are physically incapable. Instead of pandering to the human rights of such offenders we must reorientate our approach to containment, isolation and control for the ‘spectacular few’.

‘Abedi is one of those. He made a free choice to murder dozens of innocent people. His rights must always be subordinate to those looking after him.’

But there are concerns about the effect cases such as that brought by De Silva will have on the authorities’ ability to get tough.

Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick described the De Silva judgment as ‘a gift to the extremists running our prisons’.

‘Violent Islamist offenders are attacking staff with homemade weapons and boiling oil – yet the courts are telling governors to go soft because separation centres could be detrimental to their mental health,’ Mr Jenrick told the Mail.

‘Separation centres exist for containment, not comfort. We should put the safety of our prison officers above the welfare of criminals every single time. The Government must take back control – or we will all pay the price.’

Mr Jenrick believes the Abedi attack must be seen as a ‘turning point’, with Islamist extremists having been allowed to ‘rule the roost’ behind bars for far too long.

‘High-security prisons across Britain now have entire wings ruled by self-styled “brotherhood” gangs, where non-Muslim prisoners are coerced into converting to Islam for their protection,’ he said. ‘The gangs dictate menus, prayer times and many other practices. Their edicts are enforced with brutal assaults and floggings.

‘All this is happening in prisons supposedly run by the Ministry of Justice.’

In recent years, the number of prisoners identifying as Muslim has increased dramatically. Ministry of Justice figures show there were 15,594 in September 2023, accounting for 18 per cent of all inmates. This is despite the fact Muslims comprise only 6.5 per cent of the wider population.

In high-security jails one in five are Muslims. In HMP Whitemoor, a Category A prison in Cambridgeshire, the figure is 45 per cent. Many are white or black men who have adopted Islam at a far higher rate compared with that seen outside prison.

Reports have highlighted the fact that Muslim gangs now wield so much power in some jails, inmates choose to convert for the protection they offer.

Among them is the serial killer Levi Bellfield, who converted not long after being sentenced to life for the murder and rape of schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

‘He found out a paedophile had been slashed in Wakefield and thought he would be next. He was a marked man after he was convicted,’ revealed his sister Ann-Marie Bellfield. ‘He said they were good boys and would look after him… he got friendly with Islamic guys and didn’t have a problem.’ Also imprisoned at Frankland, Bellfield is now known by the name Yusuf Rahim.

It has also been claimed that prison staff fearful of being accused of racism and wanting a ‘quiet life’ have been reluctant to act against Muslim gangs, even allowing them to set up Sharia courts behind bars.

In 2022 Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terror legislation, said that prison authorities have a ‘tendency to view Islamist group behaviour’ as providing ‘a degree of calm and stability which means it is not necessarily perceived as a problem’.

One lawyer who regularly visits top-security prisons to meet inmates told the Mail that the situation on the ground was getting out of control.

‘Inmates at Whitemoor Prison essentially police themselves,’ he said. ‘There is a huge Muslim population. Most of these inmates will be criminals, often violent drug dealers, rather than terrorists.

‘From my experience, a large number of the Muslims – especially at Whitemoor – will be Christian converts, often black men. Or more precisely, non-religious criminals who decide to become Muslims for their own protection.

‘This is something which will happen hours after arriving on a wing. Immediately they arrive in prison they slot into the gang hierarchy. In some cases there are entire floors dominated by Muslim gangs.’

Some Muslim prisoners refuse to engage at all with other non-Muslim prisoners – or staff. This, he said, has led to efforts to recruit more Muslim prison officers and to the prison population dividing along ethnic lines. ‘To counter the Muslim gangs, the number of extreme Right-wing gangs is also growing,’ he said.

‘For prison officers it’s a nightmare. Managing prisoners is all about minimising problems and having prisons split along religious and ethnic lines just makes a complicated system worse, especially when you have problems with staff shortages.

‘We are not far off race riots happening in some prisons with high Muslim populations – they are very tense environments.’

Mark Fairhurst, chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, has warned that following the stabbings at Frankland, staff are now at risk from copycat attacks in other prisons.

‘These are terrorists – how do we know this will not result in a call to arms?’ he said.

It is something those on the frontline increasingly fear.

‘News quickly spread that a terrorist had attacked a Frankland prison officer and the tension on the wings was palpable,’ one prison officer currently working in a Category A prison told the Mail, talking on condition of anonymity.

‘A Muslim prisoner came up to me and said, “Boss, bad news about what happened to one of your guys at Frankland”. But he said it with a huge smile on his face.

‘I can honestly say that I pretty much dread coming into work now. Morale is at rock bottom and we – the prison officers – no longer feel as if we are in charge.’

This year already the officer has been assaulted twice – both times by Muslim prisoners on normal wings. ‘I was called into a cell by one prisoner just as I was passing – I didn’t go in but stood in the doorway and he threw a cup of s*** at me,’ he said.

‘On the other occasion I was trying to resolve a confrontation and the inmate spat into my mouth from about two feet away. Things like this are a daily occurrence in most prisons.’

And he added: ‘There is a saying “convert or get hurt” – and it is absolutely correct.

‘You get a young black guy coming in to prison and he might be a big man on the outside but on the inside he’s just another con and he’s immediately vulnerable, so he joins the Muslims’ gangs and he’s now in the company of some really violent, hardcore criminals, Pakistani gangsters, and those doing time for terrorism offences.

‘The general view is that we have ceded control to the gangs. I go to work expecting some sort of confrontation or violent incident.’

Where child killers and paedophiles are often shunned or vulnerable to attack from other inmates in prison, if they are Muslim, the gangs can even offer them protection.

Urfan Sharif, who is serving life for the murder of his ten-year-old daughter Sara, is said to be being protected at Frankland by an Islamist gang.

A source told The Sun: ‘He’s not been touched at Frankland, largely down to this Muslim gang. They’re on his wing and have said anyone trying anything must deal with them.

‘It’s warped but they say what went on in Sharif’s house was a family matter. He’s a Muslim so as far as they are concerned he’s one of them.’

Reformed prisoner Ricky Killeen spent four years in Frankland, having been jailed for his involvement in a machete attack. He now dedicates his time to assisting other ex-inmates to rebuild their lives and running a YouTube channel called Behind The Bars TV.

He was recently contacted by the mother of an inmate asking for advice on behalf of her 21-year-old son, who is serving life at Frankland.

‘He had an altercation with the Muslims and has locked himself in his cell and won’t come out, and they keep coming up to his flap and intimidating him,’ he said.

‘He was in segregation, and someone shouted something out of the window and they thought it was him bad-mouthing them. She was asking what he should do.

‘She says he wants to get transferred to another prison, but I’ve told her that all the other prisons are exactly the same. The only thing he can do is try to defuse the situation.

‘I know non-Muslims who have trouble with Muslims and they have spent years and years down the block [in segregation]. It’s not because they are afraid to be on the wing, it’s because the screws and governors keep them there for their own protection.

‘They are there for years and they are asking, “Why can’t we have our own wings, like the terrorists have got?” So a lot of them that are having trouble convert. They say to them, ‘If you convert, we will stick by you’. You can see why they do it.’

Asked what the authorities are doing to combat the problem, the Prison Service said that following Mr Hall’s report it carried out a review into faith-based gangs, with training given to staff to help identify extremist gang activity and disrupt it.

Meanwhile sources at the Ministry of Justice insist that the judicial review that was brought by De Silva has not affected their use of SCs.

As for the Abedi case, an MoJ spokesman said: ‘The Government will do whatever it takes to keep our hard-working staff safe and our thoughts remain with the two prison officers still in hospital as they recover.

‘We’ve already taken immediate action to suspend access to kitchens in separation and close supervision centres.

‘We will also launch a full independent review into how this attack was able to happen and will set out the terms and scope of this review in the coming days.’