A high profile jihadi savage, who is connected to both Al Qaida and to the London 7/7 bombers, is being released from gaol soon. After serving only just over 11 years for plotting terror attacks Rangzieb Ahmed is going to be released from his ‘life’ sentence in a few weeks.
Although there are many criminals who are sentenced to life who don’t serve a whole life term, because they have addressed their offending behaviour and reformed, Ahmed is not just your average run of the mill lifer. He’s a high profile and well connected jihadi. As such he’s unlikely in my view to be considered as a suitable candidate for release, especially as he was convicted of plotting mass murder in the name of Islam.
According to the Sun newspaper, Ahmed is trying to convince the authorities that he’s no longer a threat and has reformed. Hmm! After what happened on London Bridge recently maybe the authorities should not be so quick to assume that Ahmed’s ‘reform’ is genuine. Like Khan, the Islamic savage who murdered those who treated him as ‘reformed’, Ahmed isn’t a low level player of jihad. This is not some misguided Muslim teenager trolling Facebook with ‘caliphate’ memes, Ahmed has serious Islamic extremist connections. His release, especially at a time when the terror threat coming from Islamic groups remains high, looks to me to be something that is perverse in the extreme.
This is an exceptionally worrying case of the criminal justice system failing to protect the public properly. I don’t particularly trust the effectiveness of the monitoring that this jihadi will be under. This is because not only are there the inherent technical and resource problems with monitoring Ahmed and those like them, but also because those who are committed to killing for Allah are unlikely to be worried about breaking monitoring or prison release conditions.
Eleven years in gaol is not long enough to keep locked up those like Ahmed in order to protect the public. Ahmed and those like him need to be kept inside a lot longer. If he was considered as a big enough threat to be given a life sentence and these potential threats were credible, which I believe that they were because of his connections, then he should not be released now. We have enough problems with Islamic extremism and violence at the present time, adding another dodgy jihadi to this mix is the very last thing the criminal justice system should be doing.
It is possible to reform some murderers, some armed robbers and even some sex offenders. However I don’t think that it is possible to reform a jihadi. With these types the ideology is so deeply embedded into the jihadi that unless the person’s adherence to Islam is totally destroyed, they will continue to be a potential threat. I would not be at all surprised if we hear of Ahmed again in a few years after his release, but not for anything good or praiseworthy, just for yet more jihad involvement. Jihadis cannot be genuinely and completely reformed, they can only be contained and this is what should continue to happen to Rangzieb Ahmed
