Terrorist challenges new British anti-terrorism law, claims breaching ‘human rights’

Nahla Abdelmonem

The British government said in February that it would toughen terrorism sentences and end early release for serious offenders, as under the new legislation, which could be introduced in Parliament this spring, terrorism offenders would serve a minimum of 14 years in prison.

British politicians have repeatedly discussed tougher rules on terrorism, calls that increased after a former convict killed two people and wounded three more before police shot him dead near London Bridge in November.

A prisoner convicted of stirring up religious hatred has won the first round in his legal challenge to emergency legislation preventing early automatic release of terrorism offenders.

Lawyers for Mohammed Zahir Khan, who is serving four-and-a-half years, are arguing that the Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act, which only became law in February, discriminates against Muslims.

In a high court hearing conducted over remote video links, Hugh Southey QC, representing Khan, said terrorist prisoners are being treated differently from other inmates and that the regulations breached his human rights.

The new rules, which require those convicted of terror offences to spend two-thirds of their term in jail before being considered for release, are directed against those holding “particular Islamic beliefs” and have a “disproportionate impact” on Muslims, the court was told, according to The Guardian.

Under the previous regime, Khan would have been eligible for automatic release in February 2020. He is now due to be considered for release in November 2020.

On Tuesday, Mr Justice Garnham ruled that Khan had an “arguable case” and that his claim should now be fully analyzed at a trial. The challenge, he said, raised a matter of “some considerable” importance and public interest. “It needs to be dealt with quickly,” he added.

Khan, who is in his early 40s and originally from Birmingham, had been running a shop in Sunderland when he was arrested.

He was sentenced at Newcastle crown court in May 2018 after being convicted of encouraging terrorism and stirring up religious hatred. He admitted encouraging acts of terror and inciting religious hatred via social media.

The terrorist offenders (restriction of early release) bill was introduced into parliament the day after a recently freed terror offender, Sudesh Amman, launched a knife attack in Streatham, south London.

On 2 February 2020 two people were stabbed in Streatham, London in what police termed a terrorist incident. The attacker, Amman, was shot dead by the police.

He had previously been noted by police as having a “fascination with dying in the name of terrorism.”

Amman, whose attack on Streatham High Road left one person initially in a life-threatening condition, was under active police surveillance at the time of the attack. He had been freed after serving half of his sentence of more than three years for the possession and distribution of extremist material.

The United Kingdom is one of the top European countries that faced many challenges in the fight against terrorism as the laws related to the file were relatively weak and not deterrent enough.

Last October, the United States took custody of two Daesh prisoners accused of taking part in beheading American journalists in 2014. Both were taken from a Kurdish-run prison in northern Syria.

They were allegedly part of a quartet of British-born Islamic militants who their hostages dubbed “The Beatles”, operated by Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, which murdered at least 27 people, including the British aid worker Alan Henning

The 2019 terrorism index by the Institute for Economics and Peace has revealed that Britain is among the top targeted countries by terrorists it is ranked among the first 30 countries around the world by the rates of terrorism victims annually, maintaining an annual rise in the rate of extremist attacks.

Security analyst Khaled Okasha and Director of the National Center for Security Studies has told The Reference in an interview that terrorism issues and the danger they pose to society gives the state the sovereign right to define the essence of the risk and ways to address it, especially when it comes to organizations such as Daesh and Al-Nusra Front.