UK: Islamist threat to behead prison officer
Islamist extremists are threatening to take a prison officer hostage and behead him on camera, it has been reported.
Prison authorities have compiled an action plan for dealing with a kidnap plot involving radicalised Muslim convicts inside Britain's jails.
The dossier has been compiled in the past few months following rising tension in the prison system.
Intelligence gathered from Britain's eight top-security prisons indicate that specific threats to kidnap and decapitate an officer first emerged at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire six months ago.
However, a senior prison source said that the risk went beyond one jail.
"This is a threat faced by officers in prisons from across the country. This is why the prison service is preparing direct intervention if ever a prison officer is taken hostage," he told the Daily Mail.
Threats to kidnap and execute a warder also surfaced at Frankland prison in Co Durham last weekend.
Muslim prisoners were said to have been involved in a hour-hour riot, causing £20,000 worth of damage while demanding a transfer to another prison.
In a written statement on the incident, one inmate reportedly said: "They were shouting that they were going to cut off the head of one of the officers and film it on their phones. They have been bragging since they came to the segregation unit how they are going to do it."
Sources at the prison have described it as a "powder keg" and in June inmates fought running battles after the cell of a convicted al-Qa'eda terrorist who killed a police officer was set ablaze.
Last year Dhiren Barot, serving 30 years for a dirty-bomb plot, had boiling water poured over his head.
A Prison Service spokesman said: "For security reasons, we do not comment on individual plans."