The British government wants to toughen the law to prevent the automatic early release of those convicted of "terrorism" in the aftermath of a knife attack, claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State, committed by a man who had just benefited from it.
"We will introduce emergency legislation to end the automatic early release, without oversight or verification, of those convicted of terrorism who have served half their sentence," announced Justice Minister Robert Buckland on Monday afternoon. before the deputies.
No early releases before two-thirds of sentence
Their requests for early release can only be considered once they have completed two-thirds of their sentence and none will be released before the end of their sentence without the approval of the probation committee, said the minister.
On Sunday, Sudesh Amman, 20, who wore a dummy explosive vest, stabbed and injured a man in his 40s and a woman in his 50s in the early afternoon on a shopping street in London district of Streatham, before being shot by the police. A third person, a woman in her twenties, was slightly injured by a shard of glass caused by a shot by the police.
The assailant, convicted of possession and distribution of jihadist documents, had been released from prison less than two weeks earlier.
Heavy penalties for perpetrators
The attack, the second of its kind in two months in London, was claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group. It led Prime Minister Boris Johnson to promise "fundamental changes" in the treatment of the perpetrators.
"We must use all possible tools to ensure that this threat is neutralized," said his Minister of Justice in the House of Commons.
The government had already announced legislative tightening following the attack that killed two people at the end of November at London Bridge, in the center of London, perpetrated by a jihadist automatically released on parole, like the assailant on Sunday.
The bill, which plans to increase the penalties for perpetrators, with a minimum of 14 years in prison for serious crimes, and to prohibit their early release, is due to be tabled soon in Parliament, where the conservatives have a very large majority.
The text also focuses on preventing recidivism, promising to double the number of probation officers.
"Do not return to a system requiring a lot of monitoring"
"We don't want to go back to a system that requires a lot of very, very laborious monitoring (...) when a prison version may prove to be better," said Boris Johnson at a press conference.
"The anomaly we have to resolve is the process by which some people continue to be automatically released on parole without any examination," he added, also finding it "very difficult" to rehabilitate Islamists.
The assailant, who had just stolen the knife from a store, was released from prison in January after serving half his three-year sentence and four months in prison for possession and dissemination of jihadist content, according to the Minister of Justice. Justice.
According to the daily newspaper The Times, he had sent recruiting propaganda for the Islamic State group to relatives on WhatsApp and recorded in a notebook his will to die as a "martyr" and to kill non-Muslims.
After the attack, police said officers from his counterterrorism unit were there "as part of a preventive operation," suggesting that the assailant was being watched.
"If someone is to be watched by the police as soon as they are released, that means there is sufficient reason to keep them in prison," Streatham Labor MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy reacted on Sky News. .
70 convicts at large in London
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he was "angry (...) about the lack of progress in achieving the changes that were promised to us in November" by the government. According to him, "around" 70 people convicted of a "terrorist offense" are currently at large in London. "One of the questions I have for the government is what do we do with these 70 or so people," he added on ITV.
The man responsible for yesterday's attack in #Streatham was released from prison only days ago having served a sentence for terror offenses.
Something is clearly going seriously wrong - and the Government have serious questions to answer. pic.twitter.com/2nbTEH9JXX
Police carried out two searches in south London and in the area of Bishop's Stortford, a small town north of the capital, but made no arrests.
Suddesh Amman's mother, when interviewed by Sky News, said that her "polite and charming" son had radicalized himself online and in prison.
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