Rehabilitate or open UK Gitmo? RT panel discusses Muslim gangs in British prisons

A fresh UK government report says Muslim gangs at British top security prisons use coercion and violence to force religious conversion of non-Muslim inmates. An RT panel locks horn over ways to tackle it.

According to government figures, there are around 13,000 Muslim prisoners in Britain, comprising about 15 percent of the total prison population. The Ministry of Justice study, based on interviews at three of Britain’s eight maximum security prisons, said Muslim gangs exert pressure on non-Muslim inmates to convert to Islam, using various tactics including direct violence.

RT spoke about the problem with Jahan Mahmood, a former adviser for the UK Home Office for counter-terrorism, and political commentator David Vance, who have very different ideas about it.

Vance is for a hardline approach:“I am suggesting essentially a British Gitmo for these individuals,” he said of the radicalized inmates. 

“Guantanamo never resolved anything,” Mahmood countered, arguing that isolation and alienation instead of rehabilitation will only lead to more hardline radicals eventually coming out of the prisons.

Watch the entire debate to learn more.

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