Government 'knew risk of releasing dangerous extremists two years ago'

Armed police at the scene in Streatham High Road
PA
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A row broke out today over the Streatham terror attack as ministers were accused of ignoring warnings from security chiefs nearly two years ago about the release of dangerous extremists.

As the investigation into Sudesh Amman continued, Labour MP Kevan Jones said that Parliament’s intelligence and security committee was told by security services in 2018 that they were worried about the number of terrorists who were due for release.

Mr Jones, who was on the committee at the time, said ministers — who yesterday announced sweeping sentencing changes to keep terrorists in prison for longer — needed to explain why they had not acted sooner.

His rebuke came as Richard Walton, a former head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard, also stepped up the pressure on the Government by disclosing that police had been calling for terrorists to be kept in prison for longer “for some time”.

Former head of Scotland Yard's counter terrorism command Richard Walton
PA Archive/PA Images

He said the Government had been “too soft on all this” and that a new Australian-style system of indefinite detention was needed to ensure that the public were properly protected from “highly dangerous offenders” who would otherwise be released.

Cabinet minister Michael Gove responded by saying that ministers were ready to introduce indefinite detention “if necessary”, while Home Secretary Priti Patel conceded that ministers were rushing to close “loopholes” that had been allowing terrorists to be freed.

The ministers’ comments came as Mr Gove indicated that emergency legislation, announced yesterday by Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, would be introduced in Parliament this week.

It will ensure that existing terrorist prisoners serve at least two thirds of their sentence and are only released then if the Parole Board decides that they are safe.

They will still have to be released, however, when their sentence expires.

Streatham terror attack - In pictures

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The Government hopes to have the legislation passed within days to ensure that the new regime, which is expected to face legal challenges, is in place quickly before more terrorists are automatically released.

In a further blow, however, the Government’s terrorism watchdog, Jonathan Hall QC, told the Standard that the new system could backfire by leading to “cliff edge” releases under which terrorist offenders are released without any controls, if they are no longer freed on licence and let out instead at the end of their sentences.

But the main focus of controversy today, amid the investigation into Sunday’s stabbings in Streatham by freed terrorist Amman, was the disclosure by Mr Jones that ministers had failed to act on warnings given in 2018.

Amman was shot in Streatham
PA

Mr Jones, a senior Labour MP, said the warning had come when the intelligence and security committee, which was investigating terror attacks the previous year at Westminster, the Manchester Arena, London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Parsons Green.

He told the Standard: “The Government has known for at least a year and a half that these individuals were due to be released and it was considered that they still posed a serious risk once released. The question ministers need to answer is what they did about it.”

Mr Jones revealed the earlier warnings yesterday during a Commons debate on the Streatham attack when he told MPs: “When, in the last Parliament, the intelligence and security committee took evidence on the Westminster Bridge attack, the security services raised with the committee concern about 38, I think, individuals who would be released in the next two years and considered as dangerous.”

He stressed that the counter-terrorism experts had “real, serious concerns about these people on quite short sentences”.

Asked today why ministers had failed to act sooner to stop dangerous terrorists being released, Ms Patel insisted that Boris Johnson’s Government was acting swiftly to close down “loopholes” responsible for the problem.

She told ITV’s This Morning: “We simply cannot have individuals halfway through their sentence being released in a way in which they are not supervised and they are not assessed.

"The public will rightly ask why have we not had those checks and balances in place in the first instance. That is why we are doing this... there will be a pipeline of prisoners.”

Pressed on why it had taken so long, she added: “I’ve been Home Secretary for six months… these are the type of loopholes that we have had to shut down.”

Priti Patel

Mr Walton said he welcomed the Government’s action but said that ministers had been too slow to act in the past.

“This has been long overdue. I have been calling for longer sentences for terrorism offences for some time as have many of my colleagues and former colleagues,” he said.

“But there’s still a further step I’d take and that’s potentially to introduce post-sentence preventative detention orders for the small number of very highly dangerous offenders to prevent release if the intelligence services think they remain a threat to security.

"We’ve become too soft on this: release on licence is a privilege not a right and …the public expect protection.

“If the individual, the offender, continues to pose a very serious risk to public safety and it is judged on intelligence that that offender is going to go out and commit heinous crimes — mass murder and the like — then the Government should have the power to detain that offender for a further period of time, for a renewable period, under an order.

Mr Gove said that indefinite detention would be considered “if necessary”.

Michael Gove arrives in Downing Street
Getty Images

He told Sky News: “We need to be able to prove that people are no longer a danger to the public.

"If you have people who are in the grip of an ideology, that ideology means they want to kill innocent people in order to advance a particular religious and political view, they are a danger to society.”

However, there were growing calls for the Government to re-introduce control orders which were ditched when Theresa May was Home Secretary.

Wes Streeting, Labour MP for Ilford North, wrote to ministers, urging them: “The Government is right to act on sentencing, but the Government should also admit that the decision to replace Control Orders with Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures notices was ill-judged and should be reversed.”

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