Highlighting Counter Extremism Project Experts


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CEP Spotlight: Ian Acheson

Highlighting Counter Extremism Project Experts

 

(New York, N.Y.) – CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson
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and senior official in the U.K. Home Office with more than 25 years of
experience, is an expert in the U.K.’s criminal justice system, specifically
the prevention of  Islamist and right-wing radicalization in its prison system
and the post-release threat of terrorist offenders. In 2016, after leaving
public service, Acheson led a landmark independent review of Islamist extremism
in the country’s prison and probation service, which led to transformational
change in the way the U.K. manages ideologically inspired offenders. In the
years since, he has worked to assist governments across the world to combat
violent extremism in their prison systems and other criminal justice reforms in
post-authoritarian states. Acheson has also been the director of an
international charity and the chief operating officer of Great Britain’s legal
human rights and equality regulator. He is currently visiting professor at the
University of Staffordshire School of Policing, Law and Forensics.

 

Thought Leadership, Research, and Analysis

 

The Fishmonger’s Hall Inquest: How was Usman Khan Allowed to Kill
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On November 29, 2019, 11 months after his release from prison, convicted
Islamist terrorist Usman Khan stabbed and killed Cambridge University alumni
Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt at Fishmonger’s Hall in London. The two were
volunteers in a Cambridge University-sponsored rehabilitation program in which
Khan had been a participant and were attending a five-year celebration of the
program. Three other people were also stabbed in the attack. Khan was later
shot and killed by police on London Bridge. In a series of blogs onApril 19
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June 1
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, Acheson details the multiple institutional failures that allowed Khan into
the program and have access to his victims despite repeated assessments that he
remained a ‘high risk’ terrorist in prison who had not changed his views. “Khan
did not drop out of the sky. He was assessed, surveilled, and supervised for
eight years in prison custody. He was subject to elaborate (but ineffectual)
supervision on his release. His intent and capability to do murderous harm was
hiding in plain sight. This was a catastrophic system failure that exposes just
how broken our terrorist risk management processes are. No amount of tinkering
can fix the problem. We need a fundamental reset. Things must change. The next
Usman Khan is in the pipeline.”

 

Hiding in Plain Sight? Disguised Compliance by Terrorist Offenders
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On November 9, CEP and the European Policy Centre (EPC) held a webinar and
launch event for their discussion paper, Hiding in Plain Sight? Disguised
Compliance by Terrorist Offenders. Disguised compliance describes a
perpetrator’s deliberate manipulation of the truth to disguise his/her true
intent. Recent terrorist attacks, including Usman Khan’s at Fishmonger’s Hall
in November 2019, strongly suggest that violent extremists are readily
utilizing disguised compliance. The CEP-EPC paper examines the challenges of
detecting and countering deception and includes recommendations for frontline
practitioners, governments, and others who deal with extremists in custody or
in the community. Acheson was instrumental in the development of the CEP-EPC
paper and was a speaker at the webinar. Other webinar speakers included:
Olivier Onidi, deputy director general for Migration and Home Affairs, European
Commission; Sir Mark Rowley, former head of U.K. Counter Terrorism Policing:
Lucinda Creighton, CEP Europe advisor; Jim Gamble, founding chief executive of
the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre; and Gaby Thijssen,
psychologist, High Security and Terrorist Unit, Vught Prison, Netherlands.

 

Terror on the Street: The Inquest into the Streatham High Road Incident
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On February 2, 2020, 10 days after being released from prison after serving
half of his 40-month sentence for disseminating terrorist material, Sudesh
Amman stabbed two people with an 8-inch knife in the London suburb of
Streatham. Neither person died. Amman, under active surveillance by police, was
shot and killed at the scene. Following the attack, the British government
introduced the Terrorist Offenders Bill, a piece of emergency legislation
intended to prevent those convicted of terrorist offences from being released
early from prison. In a series of blogs onAugust 9
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,August 16
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, andAugust 23
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, Acheson distills the evidence leading to the inquest’s conclusion that
Amman’s death was justified and probes the question of whether authorities had
probable cause to return Amman to prison based on his behavior prior to the
incident. “The jury concluded that the attack could have been prevented if
Amman was returned to prison following the purchase of the fake suicide belt
materials in the days before the attack and that failing to do so was a ‘missed
opportunity.’ This contrasts with evidence from the police and HM Prison and
Probation service personnel who argued that Amman’s behaviour did not breach
his 20 license conditions and they could not act merely on the basis of
suspicion. Moreover, the police felt that revealing they had Amman under
surveillance would escalate his risk in the event that breach proceedings
failed. I think the public would not be reassured by this supine interpretation
of rules designed to protect them from harm.”

 

No Justice, No Peace? Northern Ireland’s Amnesty Fiasco
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In July 2021, the U.K. government released a discussion paper called,
“Addressing the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past.” The paper recommended
ending all criminal and civil procedures for Troubles-related court cases
associated with the prior to 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. In
blogs onJuly 26
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andSeptember 10
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, Acheson discusses his strong objection to the amnesty scheme and his
counter-proposal, which includes the establishment of a truly victim-centered
legacy center that prioritizes harm done; the compulsion for suspected
perpetrators to engage in meaningful disclosure; and civil penalties for
non-compliance.

 

Marching Home? Why Repatriating Foreign Terrorist Fighters is a Pan-European
Priority
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This CEP-EPC joint report published in November 2020 was co-authored by
Acheson and Amanda Paul and argues that Europe needs to take responsibility for
their nationals and establish a united approach towards repatriating foreign
terrorist fighters (FTFs) to their home countries. Since the fall of ISIS’s
so-called caliphate, hundreds of European FTFs and their families remain
incarcerated in overcrowded, insecure, and unsanitary prisons and camps in
Syria and Iraq. While some children have been repatriated, there is a broad
popular European resistance to the idea of bringing ‘dangerous traitors’ home,
as they are often viewed as significant security threats.

 

Guns and Glory: Criminality, Imprisonment, and Jihadist Extremism in Europe
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Acheson and EPC’s Amanda Paul also co-authored a large-scale research paper
that examined the complex inter-relationship between other forms of
non-ideological criminality and jihadist violence across nine EU countries and
the United Kingdom. The paper makes conclusions and recommendations, in
particular around improving the reintegration of convicted violent extremists
after release from prison and the case for economic investment in ‘hot spots’
for radicalization.

 

Op-eds and Selected Media

 

The Spectator: “The catalogue of failures that allowed Usman Khan to kill”
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In a June op-ed, Acheson summarizes the U.K. government’s inquest into the
murders of Cambridge University alumni Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt at
Fishmonger’s Hall by convicted Islamist terrorist Usman Khan in 2019. “The
inquest into the murder of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt by Islamist terrorist
Usman Khan has revealed a collision of arrogance, hubris, naïveté and
incompetence from which the two graduates arguably paid with their lives… Could
these murders have been prevented? The painful evidence presented to the
inquest at Guildhall over the last five weeks suggests it is plausible to think
so. The testimony paints a damning indictment of our current terrorist risk
management culture and practice.” Acheson was also interviewed about the Khan
murders byBBS Newsnight <[link removed]>.

CAPX: “Stopping terrorists starts with Prevent – but an overhaul is badly
needed”
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Acheson argues in October that after the “grotesque murder” of Sir David Amess,
a review of the UK’s Prevent counter-terrorism strategy must be undertaken
quickly:“Prevent may have nothing to do with the murder of Sir David Amess, but
a refreshed and repurposed strategy should be entirely focused on finding and
robustly managing only those who pose a potentially serious risk to national
security before ideas become deadly action. We must end the notion of voluntary
engagement and have in place criminal penalties for non-compliance with
diversion activities. Our multi-agency risk management system for terrorist
offenders in prison, further along this dismal pipeline is similarly broken…
What we need in this time of national sorrow and outrage at the killing of Sir
David Amess is the Government’s courage and conviction to go after the
ecosystem that supports and enables such barbarity. Will we get it?”

Independent: “Review of security around terrorist prisoners after first
Isis-inspired attack in UK jail”
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“The government has launched a review of the way terrorists are handled inside
UK jails amid fears for the lives of prison officers from Isis-inspired terror
attacks, The Independent can reveal. Two inmates were jailed earlier this month
for trying to murder a prison officer at HMP Whitemoor using improvised weapons
and wearing fake suicide vests – one of four terror attacks allegedly carried
out by serving or released prisoners in the past year. Ian Acheson, a former
prison governor who carried out the government’s 2016 review of Islamist
extremism in jails, said he feared that a prison officer could be taken hostage
and killed. “I’m not at all satisfied from the evidence that we’ve seen that
the prison service is on top of this problem,” he told The Independent. “We’ve
come within millimeters of a prison officer being murdered by a terrorist in
prison… There is something very wrong at the moment inside our high-security
prisons and it would be deluded to suggest otherwise.”’

CapX: “The disturbing rise of neo-Nazi terrorism in Britain”
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Acheson notes in a July op-ed that Neo-Nazis are the fastest growing group of
violent extremists in UK’s prisons, recently joined by the right-wing leader
Andrew Dymock: Three quarters of young people between 18 and 21 arrested on
suspicion of terrorist offences in the year to this April were far right
affiliated. The criminal justice conveyor belt seems crammed with white
supremacists, many of whom, thwarted and isolated, have been either been
radicalised by the internet or have used it to radicalise others… Neo-Nazis in
British jails are not yet strong enough or organised enough to compete with
Islamists. But in places where mutual radicalisation is made ever easier by the
withdrawal of legitimate authority, and warped perceptions can be honed by
dangerous propagandists like Andrew Dymock, there can be no room for
complacency. We need a strategy. I don’t know if it exists.”

 

Daily Mail: “Calls to overhaul Prevent as it is revealed 'divisive groups who
DON'T believe in counter-terror strategy help decide if individuals need to be
deradicalised' - after Islamists behind four recent attacks were ALL referred
to scheme”
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“Prevent is being undermined by activists who are opposed to its very
existence being allowed to decide if individuals need to be deradicalised, a
review will find - as it emerged Islamists behind four recent attacks were all
referred to the scheme. Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and senior
adviser at the Counter Extremism Project, said the official narrative that the
far-right is the fastest growing threat is a ‘comfort blanket’ obscuring the
‘patently more potent threat of Islamist extremism.’ ‘The body count does not
lie,’ he said.”’ 



GBNews: “Terror wannabe to be released from prison”
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“Professor Ian Acheson, senior advisor at the Counter Extremism Project,
offers his take on the release of an extremist who plotted to blow up an Army
base. ‘The Parole Board are decent people doing a very difficult job,’ Acheson
said. ‘My view is they are not the right people to be involved in assessing the
risk of our terrorist offenders. There is very fractured risk management system
all the way through prison custody which results in poor decisions being made
and catastrophic system failures, frankly, that have resulted in the murders of
people on Britain’s streets.’”



The Times: “Counter-extremist programmes need a radical overhaul”
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Acheson argues in March that the U.K.’s counter extremist programs must be
redesigned in order to be effective:“What should we do about terrorist
prisoners who subvert attempts to treat them? This week Jonathan Hall QC, the
government’s independent terror laws watchdog, published his latest report. In
it he cites the ‘significant problem’ of extremists on either side of the
prison walls who disrupt and undermine the joint Home Office/Ministry of
Justice desistance and disengagement programme, which is designed to wean them
off toxic ideologies. Subjects feigned sleep, wore headphones, went for
extended lavatory breaks and read books to frustrate the efforts of therapists
to engage with them.”

 

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