British TV host Piers Morgan penned a scathing op-ed blasting the "soft" treatment of terrorists in Britain.
Morgan made fiery remarks about crime and punishment following Friday's London Bridge attack in which two Cambridge students were stabbed to death by terrorists and three other pedestrians were injured. Police arrived on the scene and fatally shot the suspect.
You can read more about the attack here.
What are the details?
Morgan insisted that Britain is too soft on punishing "hate-filled jihadis" and instead is more concerned with pleasing the "PC hand-wringing brigade" in order to save face.
"Most terrorists don't change their evil spots, so it's time Britain stopped going soft on hate-filled jihadis to please the PC hand-wringing brigade and does what Americans do — lock them up forever," he wrote.
"What does it take these days for a nihilistic terrorist to get locked up in prison for the rest of his life?" Morgan continued. "In America, that's a relatively simple question: if you're a convicted Al-Qaeda or ISIS operative, you're led to a small cold foreboding windowless cell and you don't come out again."
Morgan pointed to the case of Usman Khan — the previously convicted terrorist shot by authorities on London Bridge — saying that the country takes a rather different tack than what America does with its terrorists.
"If you're a convicted Al-Qaeda terrorist in my country, then you get to walk free after just eight years, without anyone even bothering to check if you're still dangerous," he wrote, calling the punishment "insane."
"The horrifying attack came less than a year after the terrorist was released," Morgan added, "and by cruel irony, his victims were trying to help ex-prisoners like him at a rehabilitation conference when he mercilessly stabbed them to death."
Khan, Morgan said, was a British-born son of Pakistani immigrants and previously revered Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Khan was also caught distributing "disturbing extremist literature" when he was just 17 years old, which prompted authorities to raid his family home. Even then, Khan insisted that he wasn't a terrorist. Khan did not face charges because they did not have "hard evidence" to the contrary.
"We are going to carry on until the last breath," Khan warned at the time, "because we believe this to be true." He would go on to become a member of extremist group Islam4UK, which landed him under the careful eye of surveillance. Surveillance found that Khan was discussing on home to create a pipe bomb and was overheard calling non-Muslim people "dogs." He also reportedly spoke of plotting terror attacks at public venues such as the U.S. embassy in London.
Authorities arrested Khan, who pled guilty to planning a terror camp. Khan reportedly plead guilty to charges because he would receive a reduced sentence in exchange — just 16 years in prison. Khan served only half of his sentence before he was turned loose on the streets, able to continue his planning of terror plots.
"He was able to hoodwink everyone into believing he was a changed man, even joining Learning Together, a program run by Cambridge University, that rehabilitates prisoners," Morgan wrote. "And it was at their conference on Friday that he carried out his barbaric attack."
Morgan lamented the British criminal justice system, which he said is in shambles, and painted a picture of a disturbing reality.
"As I write this column, there are 73 other convicted terrorists who've been released early back onto the streets of Britain," he revealed. "One of them was re-arrested after the London Bridge attack because police found new evidence he may be planning a terror attack."
Police, he noted, estimate that there could be a "further 20,000 jihadists in Britain" who are "brainwashed and radicalized."
"Britain's gone weak on terror because our cowardly politicians have allowed the do-gooder, hand-wringing PC brigade to neuter down our sentencing of terrorists to the point where there is little disincentive for them to stop plotting committing terror attacks," Morgan said. "Al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists don't change their spots."
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