Small, claustrophobic and fraught with danger – this is the specialist wing for radical Islamists where three prison officers nearly lost their lives in a savage attack.
Hashem Abedi, 28, doused the wardens in hot oil before slashing them with a pair of makeshift blades on Saturday, leaving two still in hospital with serious injuries.
The separation unit where the attack took place, at HMP Frankland in County Durham, is only one of two in the UK and houses a small number of the most radical terrorists.
Located along a single short corridor, it includes cells with sound-blocking glass ‘bafflers’ to prevent the men inside from radicalising inmates on other wings.
However, the terrorists enjoy the same benefits as regular inmates, including fortnightly visits and CDs or games consoles for those with privileges.
The Frankland unit houses a TV room featuring a pool table and bookshelf, and while there are no fitness facilities, staff can arrange for inmates to visit the main prison gym and they are entitled to five hours out of their cells on weekends.
The inmates can also access a kitchen area, which Abedi – who helped his brother Salman plan the Manchester Arena bombing – used to source cooking oil and fashion two 20cm blades from a baking tray.
For former prison officer Neil Samworth, the way dangerous terrorists like Abedi were being managed was ‘madness’.
The separation centre at HMP Frankland is located along a narrow corridor, described by inspectors as ‘small and cramped’
Cooking facilities in the separation unit at Frankland, where Hashem Abedi is serving 55 years
CCTV showing Hashem Abedi in Belmarsh prison prior to storming the office of its custody manager in 2022
‘The fact that Abedi had access to all the kitchen facilities is hard to comprehend, but typical of the way prisons are run today,’ he told MailOnline.
The staff are not safe on these wings.’
There are around 20 prisoners split across the separation unit at Frankland and the second at HMP Full Sutton in Yorkshire.
An initial £1.2million was put into identifying ‘the most charismatic’ jihadists to be housed in them. While the cost of housing each inmate is not known, the average for prisoners in general is around £44,640 per year.
Inmates can mix with each other on the wing but are allowed no access to the rest of the population, which at Frankland is believed to include Ian Huntley, Wayne Couzens and Levi Bellfield.
While they were intended to prevent the spread of Islamism, the rest of Frankland is now said to be so overrun by Muslim gangs that inmates who refuse to join them are now being housed inside its own unit for their protection.
Tony Wyatt, a criminal defence barrister who regularly visits the jail, said some prisoners are being forced to serve their sentences in ‘total lockdown’ due to the breakdown in order.
‘There are so many who are members of Muslim gangs in prison, you just can’t contain the problem,’ he told The Times.
‘If the solution was to separate them – and I’m not suggesting it is – you would need entire prisons dedicated to that separation. And not just one prison, multiple prisons. That’s the scale of it’.
The cells measure 8ft by 5ft cell and contain a single bed, a thin blue mattress, a toilet, a sink and a wooden table
Manchester Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi (pictured) had access to a ‘self-cook kitchen’, hot cooking oil and the materials for the makeshift weapons used in his attack
An exterior view of HMP Frankland
Prison officials have been repeatedly criticised for allegedly tolerating Islamist gangs in the belief that their existence supports order.
In a 2022 report, Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation Jonathan Hall KC said that prison authorities have a ‘tendency to view Islamist group behaviour’ as providing ‘a degree of calm and stability which means it is not necessarily perceived as a problem’.
He added that there was a ‘reluctance to focus on Islamist group behaviour’ and prison officers would sometimes appeal to the ‘wing emir’ to maintain order.
Ian Acheson, who called for the creation of separation units in a 2016 review of Islamic extremism in prison, believes jail bosses have been ‘appeasing’ these groups out of fear of being seen as racist.
During research for his report, he said officers at Frankland ‘spoke matter-of-factly about being taken hostage to be beheaded’.
Today, the former prison governor blamed failures to clamp down on Islamist prisoners for making this threat more potent than ever.
‘I know from my time in Northern Irish jails that terrorist prisoners who do not accept the authority of the state regard prison staff as legitimate targets on and off duty,’ he told MailOnline.
‘Officers talked matter-of-factly about being taken hostage to be beheaded. There seemed no real attempt by authorities to understand let alone react to their risk.’
Abedi (pictured in 2017) was known to be one of the most dangerous inmates in the UK, with a history of attacking officers
Police interviewing him following the 2017 Manchester Arena terror attack
Brusthom Ziamani and Muslim convert Baz Hockton (right), who was radicalised in jail, screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ and wore hoax bomb vests as they set upon Prison Officer Neil Trundle with a shank at HMP Whitemoor in 2020
While they attract far less attention than outrages taking place on the streets, terror attacks have long been a problem behind bars.
Brusthom Ziamani and Baz Hockton screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ and wore hoax suicide vests as they attacked Neil Trundle with makeshift blades after luring him into a cupboard at HMP Whitemoor, Cambridgeshire.
They were convicted of attempted murder in October 2020.
Abedi himself joined two other inmates to attack two guards at HMP Belmarsh in August 2020 – shortly after he was jailed for his role in the Manchester Arena bombing.
Mr Acheson said jihadists were exploiting weak security routines to mount attacks.
‘What we are seeing in Frankland is not untypical of places where the exhaustion of hyper vigilance and the by products of appeasement puts staff off their guard and means security processes may not be followed rigorously,’ he said.
‘Dealing with people who have nothing to lose and balancing humanity with security is an elite job. Officers engaged in this work must have access to the highest levels of support and leadership and the right training and equipment to carry out their jobs.
‘I think that priority has been lost. I am very worried for the future welfare of front line staff unless ministers force complacent and out of touch bureaucrats running the prison service to pay attention.’
Frankland is also thought to house Lee Rigby’s killer Michael Adebolajo , who he has been accused of helping to radicalise, but it is not clear if he is housed in the separation centre
Former prison governor Professor Ian Acheson (pictured) blamed the state’s enforcement of security measures for dangerous inmates
The second separation unit is located at HMP Full Sutton in Yorkshire
Mark Fairhurst, the national chairman of the Prison Officers Association, has been calling for officers to be issued with stab vests.
He said: ‘I do not know why we are so terrified of upsetting terrorist offenders. We are appeasing them instead of treating them as the threat that they represent.
‘We need to stop allowing terrorist offenders in separation centres the freedom and privilege to use self-cook facilities and we need to issue stab-proof vests and protective equipment to officers.
‘The use of Tasers may not have prevented this attack as those officers would not have had time to draw them, but their injuries would have been severely reduced if they had them.
‘Staff are now at risk from copycat attacks in other prisons. These are terrorists – how do we know this will not result in a call to arms?
‘Terrorist prisoners are intent on causing harm, and people in these separation centres want to destroy our way of life. Why are we appeasing people who want to kill us?’
After the attack, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood promised: ‘I will be pushing for the strongest possible punishment.’
The use of kitchen facilities inside separation centres has currently been suspended, it emerged today.
