Can Muslim Terrorists be Deradicalized? - Part I

In this mailing: - Denis MacEoin: Can Muslim Terrorists be Deradicalized? - Part I - Uzay Bulut: ISIS Women: Victims or Perpetrators? [] [Can Muslim Terrorists be Deradicalized? - Part I]( by Denis MacEoin • February 5, 2020 at 5:00 am [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [WhatsApp]( [Telegram]( [Send]( [Print]( - "What we found [in prisons] was so shockingly bad that I had to agree to the language in the original report being toned down. With hindsight, I'm not sure that was the right decision." — Ian Acheson, British expert on prisons. - "There were serious deficiencies in almost every aspect of the management of terrorist offenders... Frontline prison staff were vulnerable to attack and were ill-equipped to counter hateful extremism on prison landings for fear of being accused of racism. Prison imams did not possess the tools, and sometimes the will, to combat Islamist ideology. The prison service's intelligence-gathering system was hopelessly fractured and ineffectual." — Ian Acheson, "London Bridge attack: I told ministers we were treating terrorist prisoners with jaw-dropping naivety. Did they listen?", London Times, December 1, 2019. - "Obedience is achieved by violence and intimidation carried out by members of the group known as enforcers. 'Those who had committed terrorist crimes often held more senior roles in the gang,' the study found, 'facilitated by the respect some younger prisoners gave them.'" — Patrick Dunleavy, former Deputy Inspector General for New York State Department of Corrections, June 18, 2019. - "The study found that terrorist groups such as al-Qaida did not see prison as an obstacle. Quite the opposite, they viewed it as an opportunity to organize and expand." — Patrick Dunleavy. Usman Khan's deadly terror attack in London on November 29, 2019 is evidence that the existing schemes for deradicalization and rehabilitation of convicted terrorists are inherently unstable and, in a certain percentage of cases, likely to fail. Pictured: Belmarsh Prison, in London, from where Usman Khan was released to continue his terrorist activities. (Photo by Graeme Robertson/Getty Images) On Friday November 29, 2019, an Islamist terror attack took place in London. Two young people, both recent Cambridge University graduates, Jack Merritt (25) and Saskia Jones (23), were stabbed and killed by a single attacker. It was a terrible and unnecessary loss of life. The special irony about Jack and Saskia's deaths is that they (and a colleague) had been involved with Cambridge University's Learning Together prison-rehabilitation program, similar to the US version known as Inside-Out, both of which bring prison inmates together with students to learn together. The British programme is run by Cambridge University's Institute of Criminology, from which both Merritt and Jones had received M.Phils in criminology. [Continue Reading Article]( [] [ISIS Women: Victims or Perpetrators?]( by Uzay Bulut • February 5, 2020 at 4:00 am [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [WhatsApp]( [Telegram]( [Send]( [Print]( - "Female members of ISIS are often perceived as being passive, naïve, or even as victims. This is a dangerous and wildly inaccurate characterization." — Free Yezidi Foundation. - It is important to stress that the true victims of ISIS's hateful practices are not the thousands of women and girls who willingly joined ISIS and actively participated in the group's horrendous crimes against humanity, but rather the hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yezidis and Muslims whom they displaced, tortured and killed. Whether the "ISIS brides" -- women who abetted men in the abduction, rape, torture and slaughter of Yezidis and Christians in Iraq and Syria -- are worthy of mercy is questionable. Pictured: Iraqi Yezidi women mourn at a ceremony during the exhumation of a mass-grave of hundreds of Yezidis killed by Islamic State terrorists in the northern Iraqi village of Kojo, on March 15, 2019. (Photo by Zaid Al-Obeidi/AFP via Getty Images) The recent case of Samantha Marie Elhassani (née Samantha Sally) -- an American mother-of-two who left her home in Indiana to join the now-defunct Islamic State (ISIS) caliphate in Syria -- sheds light on the issue currently debated in the West about the degree of culpability of terrorists' wives, and whether they should be viewed as victims or perpetrators. On November 25, in a U.S. Federal Court, Elhassani pled guilty to, and was convicted of "providing financial support to individuals who desired to support ISIS." According to U.S. Attorney Thomas L. Kirsch II: "[Elhassani] traveled with her husband and brother-in-law to Syria, both of whom became ISIS fighters, putting the lives of her children at risk. [Her] guilty plea to federal terrorism charges reflects the seriousness of her criminal conduct." FBI Special Agent Grant Mendenhall added: [Continue Reading Article]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [RSS]( [Donate]( Copyright © Gatestone Institute, All rights reserved. You are subscribed to this list as {EMAIL} You can change how you receive these emails: [Update your subscription preferences]( or [Unsubscribe from this list]( [Gatestone Institute]( 14 East 60 St., Suite 705, New York, NY 10022