The inquest into the late Islamic extremist Nicky Reilly, who tried to bomb a Giraffe restaurant in Exeter back in 2008 is revealing not just a great deal about Reilly’s mental condition and the responses to it, but also about Islam in our secure psychiatric hospitals. The inquest, held after Reilly hanged himself in HMP Manchester in 2016, has gone into great detail about how Reilly was transferred from prison to Broadmoor Secure Hospital, following concerns from prison staff about his mental state.

At Broadmoor, psychiatrists tried to treat the autistic Reilly for his conditions but realised that they needed to also tackle his extremism which was something linked into his various mental conditions. Unfortunately, Reilly was not prepared to cooperate with the treatment regime and remained a staunch devotee of Islamofascism right up until the end. One of the Doctors at Broadmoor thought that he could be helped, but his involvement in an attack on staff over a row over intimidatory Muslim prayers in the hospital, convinced staff that Reilly could not be helped and returned him to HMP Manchester.

Although it was intriguing to find out that the staff at Broadmoor did as much as they could to help Reilly and get him to drop his extremism, it’s the information about this attack, and what led up to it, that interested me most about this case. It appears, at least from reading between the lines of the Plymouth Live report about this case, that Broadmoor, like our prisons and our schools, have a problem with gangs of aggressive violent Muslims. According to the Plymouth Live news site (h/t ROP), Reilly made complaints to staff that the Muslims in the hospital were being ‘victimised’ as the hospital authorities had forbidden the Muslims from engaging in ad hoc public prayer. This public display of Islamic cohesiveness was taken by some patients as the Muslims intimidating the non Muslim patients and making them feel unsafe. In response to that complaint the hospital, quite rightly in my view, restricted such Islamic prayer to specific times.

The hospitals actions angered the Muslims including Reilly. The result of this was that Reilly and the other Muslims attacked hospital staff in July 2015. Following the attack the member of staff responsible for Reilly’s treatment, Dr Kevin Murray, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, realised that there was no real prospect of treating Reilly’s mental ailments and Reilly was transferred back to prison.

Plymouth Live said:

Dr Murray said before the attack on staff he believed Reilly should remain at Broadmoor and continue to get treatment. He had stopped self harming and was cooperative with his treatment programmes. But the violence prompted the doctor to change his mind.

Following the violence Reilly accused the hospital staff of causing the violence because of how the staff had treated the hospital’s Muslims.

Plymouth Live added:

Dr Murray said Reilly told doctors they bore some responsibility for the attack on nursing staff because he felt he and other Muslims were being treated with contempt.

Other patients had complained about Muslims praying in groups and being intimidating. The ward had placed a ban on communal praying at certain times and Reilly and other Muslims had attacked staff. Few details were given about the attack itself but the coroner described it as a ‘horrendous’ experience for staff.

The Coroner’s choice of words tends to suggest that this was a pretty bad attack on staff by the Muslims. That, coupled with the decision by medical staff to return Reilly to prison because of his part in the violence does imply somewhat that the attack was much more serious than the hospital authorities may be letting on to the public. Why this may be he case I do not know? Maybe revealing such details may also reveal a little too much of those parts of Broadmoor’s security procedures that by necessity may need to be kept shrouded in secrecy.

However, what it does reveal is that even our most secure of secure hospitals, the places where we put the most mentally damaged of our criminals, are now also places where gangs of Muslims mete out violence to staff and intimidation to other patients. When the ability to intimidate other patients with ad hoc mass prayers, was rightly clamped down on by staff, the response from these Muslims was to attack and probably inflict injuries on hospital staff.

This incident should give both the public and the relevant government departments and agencies great cause for concern. We should not be tolerating gangs of Muslims intimidating staff and patients in our psychiatric hospitals as these hospitals have a duty of care for the other patients. The Muslims of Broadmoor must, by their location be the very worst of the worst, but it is a bad sign to see that even in a secure hospital like this we are seeing violent Muslim gangs operating. It makes me wonder and worry about what is happening in other psychiatric hospitals, whether similar Islamic gangs are operating there and how, if at all, these gangs are being tackled?