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Are prisons a breeding ground for terrorists?
© St. Petersburg Times While serving time in a British prison, Richard C. Reid found religion. But he did it in a way authorities didn't anticipate: He adopted a radical form of Islam. Reid, a petty thief, went on to notoriety as the "shoe bomber" who allegedly tried to blow up a Miami-bound passenger plane last month. Although the tall, gangly loner has said little since his arrest, he had vowed to become a holy warrior waging jihad against the West, according to those who knew him in London. Reid, 28, converted to Islam while in a youthful offenders institution, where he was taught by a Muslim imam later suspended for "inappropriate conduct." Since Sept. 11, the British government has suspended three other prison imams, including one who became stridently anti-American after the terrorist attacks. All this raises a troubling question: Have British prisons become prime recruiting grounds for Muslim terrorists? Reid's conversion to Islam suggests young inmates are being targeted by radical organizations, said Oliver Letwin, a leading Conservative member of Parliament. If that is the case, he said, steps should be taken to stop prisons from becoming "academies of extremism." Reid's story illustrates a dilemma facing correctional authorities not just in Britain, but also in the United States. Religion can be a powerful force in helping inmates straighten out their lives and become productive citizens upon their release. But what's to keep prisoners from being exploited by "spiritual counselors" with a more nefarious agenda? "There's really no way we can prevent a priest or a rabbi or an imam from spouting off" offensive ideas, says Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections. "The fact is the services are private, they are held in conference rooms not directly supervised." Reid's path toward radical Islam apparently began when he was sent to Feltham Young Offenders Institution, the largest facility of its kind in Europe and one of the most notorious prisons in Britain. A 1999 report described it as "rotten to the core," with conditions and treatment of inmates "totally unacceptable in a civilized country." At the suggestion of his father, a Jamaican-born career criminal who had converted to Islam, Reid took instruction from an imam named Abdul Ghani Qureshi. It is unknown what transpired between the two, but at about the time Reid was released in 1996, Qureshi was asked to leave the prison for unspecified reasons. He could not be reached for comment. From Feltham, Reid went to the Brixton Mosque in south London, which is known for helping troubled youth find jobs and get back on track. There he reportedly met Zacarias Moussaoui, who is awaiting trial in the United States on charges that he was the "20th hijacker" in the September attacks. The mosque's leader said Reid grew a beard, wore a military jacket over his Islamic robes and began spewing hate-filled rhetoric. "He made a big point about arguing about the jihad with us," Abdul Haqq Baker told the Guardian of London. "We were trying to tell him it is often a personal struggle, not a violent one, but he accused us of selling out to the West." In 1998, Reid left the mosque, which heard nothing more about him until he resurfaced so publicly aboard American Airlines Flight 63 on Dec. 22. Even before Reid's arrest and news of his jailhouse conversion, authorities were becoming alarmed over extremist elements in British prisons. The imam at Feltham -- son of the man who taught Reid -- was suspended Nov. 15 for "alleged unprofessional behavior," which included praising the Sept. 11 hijackers and railing against "the big devil America." The imam at another youthful offenders prison was suspended Oct. 1 after passing around the transcript of a broadcast including inflammatory statements by Osama bin Laden. And a third imam, this one at a maximum security adult prison, was suspended Sept. 14 amid allegations he had ties to Islamic fundamentalists. Although he was cleared by an investigation, he will have to go through more security checks before he is allowed back. The head of Her Majesty's Prison Service denies the service has been lax in screening Muslim imams, even though they are hired by the hour and are not fulltime staffers like Church of England ministers. "Our security procedures are thorough and the fact we excluded one and suspended two imams proves that claims to the contrary are absurd," director-general Martin Narey said. "I am confident that Islamic organizations that the prison service meets with regularly would share my view that our precautions are entirely reasonable. Overwhelmingly, imams make a huge contribution to prisons and the resettlement of prisoners." Nonetheless, Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a prominent psychiatrist who often works in British prisons, says Islam has assumed a presence disproportionate to the relatively small number of Muslim inmates. (Four-thousand Muslims are among the 67,500 inmates.) "A visitor to our prisons might be forgiven for concluding that Britain was an Islamic country," Dalrymple wrote in London's Daily Telegraph. "He would reach this conclusion because he would see a vast amount of Islamic literature . . . quite unmatched in quantity by any Christian literature, which is conspicuous mainly by its absence." Islam, Dalrymple says, is attractive to inmates "because it revenges them upon the whole of society. For whatever official apologists of multiculturalism say, everyone knows that Western society has long felt uneasy about the growing number of Muslims in its midst. By converting to Islam, the prisoner is therefore expressing his enmity toward society in which he lives and by which he believes himself to have been grossly maltreated." Thus far, there has been no indication of religious extremism penetrating U.S. jails or prisons. But it would be hard to track, because many jails try to respect the privacy between inmates and clergy. If an adviser "is granted access into the jail to talk to a prisoner one on one, they are entitled to privacy if he's under the guise of the ministry," says Cal Dennie, a Pinellas County sheriff's spokesman who works as a religious volunteer at the county jail. "But if we gain intelligence or have suspicions, we wouldn't give them access." In the Pinellas jail, inmates can have private "contact" visits with spiritual advisers, who must undergo background and security checks. In Hillsborough County, there are no special checks of religious advisers, since visits are conducted through a glass window or by video conferencing. "Years ago we used to allow ministers to come in and meet with inmates in a contact setting," says Col. David Parrish, who heads the Hillsborough jails. "They had to show us that they were registered ministers and that put us in an untenable situation of determining who is and who isn't. Then we went to this basis so they're just treated like anyone else." In the Florida prison system, Muslims and other inmates can meet with spiritual advisers in private conference rooms. The corrections department has made no major changes in its procedures since Sept. 11 although Ivey, the spokesman, acknowledges it is often difficult to know what is going on between prisoner and adviser behind closed doors. Have there been abuses of the adviser-inmate relationship? "There certainly have," Ivey says. "In fact, we have had instances where things have been done in the name of religion that obviously were not, such as contraband passed back and forth and sexual relations." But while it's possible to crack down on that kind of activity, "there's really no way we can prevent a Muslim imam in a religious ceremony spouting off anti-American sentiments." -- Susan Taylor Martin can be reached at susan@sptimes.com
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