Johnson to end early release of terrorist prisoners after London attack

EPA-EFE/PETER POWELL
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivers a speech during a visit to the London Electric Vehicle company, West Midlands, Britain, 13 November 2019. Britons go to the polls on 12 December in a general election

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UK prime minister Boris Johnson has signalled that terrorists that are currently in jail will lose their right to early release halfway through their sentences.
The move follows Sunday’s Streatham terror attack, when ISIS fanatic Sudesh Amman was shot dead by undercover police officers after stabbing two people.  He had recently been released from prison for terror offenses and was under active surveillance by the counter-terror authorities.
After the attack, Johnson said measures will be introduced to bring fundamental changes to the way people convicted of terror offenses are handled in prison and afterward.
“I think the question everyone wants to ask is what was he doing on automatic early release and why was there no system of scrutiny, no parole system, to check that he was a candidate suitable for early release. That is a very complex legal question, and as you know we are bringing forward legislation to stop the system of automatic early release”, Johnson said.
“The difficulty is how to apply that retrospectively to the people who qualify for automatic early release. We do think it’s time to take action to make sure, irrespective of the law that we are bringing in, that people in the current stream do not qualify automatically”, he added.
London has suffered a number of similar terror attacks in the last years. In November, two people were stabbed to death by a person who was wearing a hoax bomb. Police killed the suspect on the scene. In 2017, seven people died and 48 others were injured by attackers who were also wearing fake explosive vests.
Currently, there are 224 terrorist prisoners in jail but still eligible for early release.

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