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Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
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February 9, 2018
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Macramé
for Terrorists
by Patrick Dunleavy
IPT News
February 9, 2018
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first of your friends to like this.
 The theater of the
absurd will soon have a new actor if convicted Islamic terrorist Ahmad Rahimi has his way. Rahimi has asked to be
allowed to take a variety of prison programs while serving a life sentence
for setting off several bombs in the New York-New Jersey
area in 2016.
He has been taking a drama class while in Manhattan's Metropolitan
Correctional Center, his lawyer Xavier Donaldson told U.S. District Judge Richard Berman. He would like
to continue to pursue this and enroll in several other educational programs
in business and enterprise risk management.
Unfortunately, that's not all he's been doing in MCC. Rahimi has been radicalizing other inmates to his jihadist cause in the
prison mosque. He also has shared instructions on how to build an
improvised explosive device with his fellow inmates.
Realizing that, as the prosecutor in his case wrote, Rahimi "continues to attempt to wage jihad
from his prison cell..." What prison rehabilitation program would best
address his situation? Basket Weaving for Bombers?
The stark reality is, there is none. Two years ago, Assistant Attorney
General for National Security John Carlin acknowledged that neither the
Bureau of Prisons nor the DOJ had a program that successfully dealt with
incarcerated terrorists, and a recently released study from George Washington
University's Program on Extremism confirmed that. The study went on to warn that the continued failure to have an
adequate de-radicalization program would only increase the threat of
radicalization in prison.
Why is there such reluctance to initiate a much needed program? What
irrational thinking drives some to oppose facing the threat of
radicalization head on?
When the FBI attempted to initiate a program that would address
radicalization in society as a whole, particularly involving young people
who were most vulnerable to the allure of groups like ISIS through the
internet, it was met with stiff resistance from several groups including
the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which felt the program
singled out Muslims.
In some cases, defense attorneys have raised concerns that any
de-radicalization program that attempts to change an inmate's religious
beliefs, even those as twisted as a committed jihadist, would violate both
the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment.
Several convicted terrorists in U.S. prisons have already sued the
Bureau of Prisons over that very issue, including American Taliban fighter
John Walker Lindh and underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. So perhaps it's a fear of
continued litigation that hinders the development of any viable
de-radicalization program that terrorists in prison would be required to
attend.
What if the program were voluntary? In the United Kingdom, the
overwhelming majority of inmates convicted of terror crimes simply refused
to attend any de-radicalization program and still were released from
prison.
The GW study notes that there are 140 people in prison for
supporting ISIS. Add to that the hundreds of others who supported Islamic
terrorist organizations like al-Qaida or the Taliban, and have been
incarcerated for decades, and one wonders what – if anything – has been
done while they were in prison to lessen the threat their beliefs pose.
Are terrorists like 1993 World Trade Center bomb plotters El Sayyid
Nosair and Mohammed Salameh, or would-be al-Qaida bombers Jose Padilla and
Richard Reid, or countless others being exposed to any therapeutic program
specifically designed to correct their jihadist behavior?
More than 300 ex-cons who were in prison for terror-related crimes now
walk the streets. They served their time and were released. Does anyone
know exactly where they are? Is there a post-release registration program
that notifies law enforcement agencies when someone who has been convicted
of terrorism moves into their community? We do it with sex offenders. Why
not terrorists?
Given that the vast majority of people convicted of terrorism crimes are
not serving life sentences and that as many as 100 of them will
be released in the coming years, the Department of Justice must act
quickly to remedy the situation.
The Bureau of Prisons' response to the GW study was to claim that
"prisoners linked to terrorism have access to programs...including
education and vocational training."
Maybe. But Macramé for Terrorists isn't the solution to the continuing
threat of prison radicalization.
IPT Senior Fellow Patrick Dunleavy is the former Deputy Inspector
General for New York State Department of Corrections and author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad. He currently
teaches a class on terrorism for the United States Military Special
Operations School.
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