Should double murderers who take prison guards hostage be treated with conditions that are almost as harsh as those the British government imposed on Tommy Robinson, or is that going too far?
Robinson spent months in prison segregation, which amounts to solitary confinement. His crime? He violated a court order that had prevented him from showing a documentary he had produced.
Fuad Awale is an Islamist who murdered two people and took a prison guard hostage, demanding that another Islamist be released from prison.
A British court just awarded him £240,000 for being held under similar conditions to those of Robinson.
At some point there are going to be trials for treason.
— Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) January 1, 2026
Which carries the death penalty.
Islamist killer wins £240k battle over his human rights https://t.co/PBmkFzeag6
You can't make this stuff up.
An Islamist killer who took a prison officer hostage and demanded the release of hate preacher Abu Qatada has won a £240,000 battle over taxpayer-funded compensation and legal costs.
David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, has agreed to pay £7,500 in compensation and foot a £234,000 legal bill for Fuad Awale, a convicted double murderer, after a judge ruled that his treatment in jail breached his human rights.
Awale was transferred to a special separation unit for the country’s most dangerous prisoners after he and another inmate ambushed the prison officer and threatened to kill him unless Britain released Qatada.
He claimed this segregation – designed to prevent him harming officers and radicalising other inmates – had breached his right to a private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Awale claimed that he had suffered “severe depression” as a result of being denied contact with other inmates.
The court was told he had asked to associate with one of the Islamist extremist killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby but was denied the request owing to “counter-terrorism concerns”. The High Court ruled in Awale’s favour, with a judge saying: “The degree of interference with the claimant’s private life which has resulted from his removal from association has been of some significance and duration.”
No word yet about the condition of the private lives of his two dead victims. We are still awaiting comment, but none seems to be forthcoming, probably due to racism or something.
Awale is serving a life sentence for shooting two men in the head in 2011 in what a judge described as a planned “execution”.
Aged 25, he was sentenced to a minimum of 38 years prison in January 2013 after killing Mohammed Abdi Farah, 19, and Amin Ahmed Ismail, 18, in an alleyway in Milton Keynes over a drugs dispute.
Sounds like a great guy, and we wouldn't want to interfere in his private life.
Apparently, the ruling was made under the guidance of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is designed to ensure that fine citizens like Awala are not mistreated, but which more than a few argue prioritizes the rights of terrorists and other violent criminals over those who are or might be their victims.
Such as, perhaps, the prison guards whom he might kidnap.
Just sayin'.
He was handed a further six-year jail sentence after he and two others took a prison officer hostage in 2013 and made threats to kill him.
Awale pointed a sharp implement at the throat of the officer who was pinned to a chair and said: “Stop struggling, I’ve killed two people – I’ll kill you.”
Not to sound bloodthirsty, but one can make a case that some people might not turn out to be the best citizens ever, and perhaps the older, harsher system of justice in Great Britain might have had a bit of common sense to it.
In other words, maybe Awale should just have been hanged. It strikes me that Britain was pretty civilized in 1965, when the death penalty for murder was suspended. If you rolled back the sentencing guidelines to, say, 1964, it's possible that problems like this would be averted.
You might even be in a position to punish serial rapists.
Awale and his accomplice demanded the release of Qatada, a hate preacher who at the time was facing deportation to Jordan to face terror charges, as well as of Roshonara Choudhry, who stabbed Labour MP Stephen Timms in 2010.
He was subsequently assessed by the prison service as having “extremist beliefs” and held in “close supervision centres” specifically designed within high-security jails to hold the most dangerous prisoners.
As many as four officers with body-worn cameras “unlock” the inmates each time they leave their cells.
The court was told Awale had been held in HMP Woodhill, in Milton Keynes, since 2021 and had not associated with any other prisoners since March 17, 2023, spending as little as one hour a day outside his cell.
I am not, generally speaking, in favor of making prisons hellholes for all inmates, and am actually pretty leery of giving nearly unlimited power to anybody without watching them like a hawk. I find prison rape jokes horrific because the state has a duty of care for people under its power, and I even think we should look at alternative means of incarceration for some types of prisoners who might be salvaged.
It's not like the prison system we have now works well. Although I have yet to see convincing arguments that any system works that well, and segregating criminals from ordinary citizens should be job #1.
But with scumbags like Awale, I don't get overly worried about the niceties, and find the idea that keeping a man with proven violent tendencies such as his segregated to be common sense.
He chose to be there, for all intents and purposes. What did he expect when he kidnapped a guard?
Well, in the UK, apparently, he can expect to have the courts on his side.
Suicidal empathy.
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