Islamist Inmates Exempt From Dog Searches at Prison Where Guards Were Stabbed, Claims Union Boss

In the wake of the stabbing of multiple prison guards allegedly by the Manchester Arena terrorist, the head of the largest prison officers’ union revealed that the prison was barred from conducting searches with sniffer dogs on Muslim inmates.

Earlier this month, four prison officers at His Majesty’s Prison Frankland were injured with boiling oil and a makeshift blade. Hashem Abedi, who was convicted of aiding his brother in bombing an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that left 22 dead and over a thousand injured, was alleged to have been the attacker.

On Sunday, the national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, Mark Fairhurst, claimed that Abedi and other Islamist inmates in Frankland were exempt from searches with trained K-9s on the order of the prison’s management committee, which sided with Muslim prisoners, who complained that contact with dogs went against their faith.

“When it first opened, every prisoner housed on that unit was thoroughly searched on the unit, and when they left the unit and when they returned to the unit. On occasion, dogs were used,” he told The Sun.

“The prisoners complained that it interfered with their religious beliefs. The management committee overruled the staff and removed the dogs from searching those prisoners.”

“We appease these prisoners and pander to them. Why? Why are we so obsessed with upsetting prisoners, terrorist prisoners, whose sole purpose is to murder prison officers?”

This critique was seconded by Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, who said: “It’s pathetic if HMP Frankland has folded to ­Islamist prisoners and allowed them to circumvent security checks.

“This would allow Islamist gangs to control prison wings across the country. Officers should not fear being labelled racist if they step in to restore order and control from radical Islamist prisoners.”

According to the paper, unnamed sources within the Ministry of Justice denied that there had been any operational changes regarding the use of dogs in searches, including at the Falkland prison.

Yet, in a statement which seemingly skirted an official denial, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said that the government will seek to “strengthen” the defences of prison staff and the public. She said that in the wake of the stabbing attack at Falkland, the “Prison Service will also conduct a snap review into whether protective body armour should be made available to front-line staff.”

There have been increasing concerns about the Muslim prison population in Britain, which accounts for nearly a fifth of all prisoners despite Muslims only making up around 6 per cent of the country’s population per the latest census.

A 2022 report on the growing influence of Muslim gangs in British prisons by anti-terrorism legislation reviewer Jonathan Hall KC found that such groups were “encouraged” to attack non-Muslim prisoners, as well as on prison staff. The report found that “self-styled emirs” used “enforcers” to exert control over areas of the prison and that there were failures to push back against this by authorities for fear of appearing racist.

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