British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday his administration would reveal new rules pertaining to the release of convicted terrorists.
“We’re bringing forward legislation to stop the system of automatic early release,” Johnson said at a press conference. “This is a liberal country, it is a tolerant country. But I think the idea of automatic early release for people who obviously continue to pose a threat to the public has come to the end of its useful life.”
Johnson added that the new guidelines would have to consider the difficulties involved in keeping terrorist convicts within the prison system.
“Do you detain them en bloc, in one group, and try to keep them together because that avoids them, as it were, infecting or passing the virus of their beliefs to others in jails, or do you disperse them and try to stop them reinfecting each other?” Johnson said.
Johnson’s announcement came one day after a terror attack in south London that left three injured. The attacker, Sudesh Amman, had been jailed in 2018 after he pledged fealty to ISIS and encouraged his then-girlfriend to behead her own parents for being “infidels.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Monday criticized the British government’s handling of the attack.
“There’s lots of questions I’ve got for the government in relation to what they are doing to keep us safe,” Khan said in an interview with Sky News.
In late November, a convicted terrorist named Usman Khan killed two people in a separate attack in London. Khan had been released on a form of parole, and attacked several people who were part of his rehabilitation program.