ISIS supporter put former Australian soldier in critical condition in prison assault

EXCLUSIVE: THIS is the ISIS supporter accused of carving “e4e” — representing “an eye for an eye” into the head of his cellmate, a former Australian soldier.

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AN ISIS supporter has been charged after allegedly carving “e4e” — representing “an eye for an eye” into the head of an Australian Digger he was sharing a cell with.

The former soldier, who served in East Timor, is fighting for his life following the alleged attack inside Kempsey prison on the state’s Mid North Coast.

Senior prison sources said the 18-year-old attacker was a known supporter of the terrorist group and had been previously caught sending graphic images of beheadings via internal mail to other ISIS extremists housed in Goulburn’s Supermax.

Bourhan Hraichie is accused of attacking another inmate, a former Australian soldier.

Bourhan Hraichie has now been charged with causing grevious bodily harm with intent and intentionally choking a person.

He will face Kempsey Local Court on May 23.

Sources said the teen was also previously found to have a hand-drawn ISIS flag inside his cell, as well as having carved one into the wall.

The pair were in the same cell for just a few hours before Thursday’s alleged attack inside the prison’s maximum security section. Authorities were alerted when a medical alarm system, known as a “knock up” was activated.

ISIS is known to use the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” mantra when inflicting their brutal torture.
It is understood the teen allegedly used a razor blade to etch the slogan, but prison authorities would not confirm it.

Hraichie had been isolated from other inmates previous to the alleged attack because he was being “disruptive”.

NSW Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin confirmed the attack, saying it “appears to have had a strong fundamentalist element to it” and that the teen had “clearly identified himself as a radical”.

“I am appalled that these two inmates were placed in the same cell,” Mr Severin said.

“This was a serious mistake and is under investigation.”

Another inmate and a guard were also assaulted at the Kempsey jail yesterday.

He said the general manager of the jail Greg Steele had been suspended pending an investigation into the attack.

The prisoners boss also said the radicalisation of prisoners was not a systemic issue inside the state’s prison system and that the teen should have not been sharing a cell with any inmate.

“I had no choice but to suspend the general manager, that’s not an easy step it’s a serious step,” he said.

“Under the circumstances we really have to make sure we have good procedures in place and they are adhered to.

“What we are dealing with you is not a systemic issue. Yes we have a range of inmates who are clearly at risk of being radicalised but we also have robust strategies.

“What is new is the fact that we have a range of people that are quite young that are showing tendencies of radicalisation.”

NSW Opposition MP Guy Zangari said the slip up was shocking.

“Management has placed the life of this minimum security inmate at risk by placing him in with this maximum security inmate,” he told reporters today.

While Corrective Services denied the teen was caught sending graphic images, they did confirm he had a hand-drawn IS flag in his cell.

The teen is alleged to have used a sharp object to carve the tribute to the terror group on the front and back of the former soldier’s head before placing a towel over him and pouring boiling hot water.

The victim also suffered a broken sternum and was rushed to Port Macquarie Base Hospital with severe wounds to his neck, head and face and he was placed in an induced coma.

The pair were mistakenly placed together because of a lack of communication between management and jail staff in what the prisons union has described as a “major error”.

The 40-year-old former Toowoomba-based former soldier was believed to have been suffering from post traumatic stress disorder as a result of his time serving overseas. Sources said the man had a history of assault charges and breaching AVOs.

The inmate has been charged following the alleged attack and at least one senior Corrective Services staffer has been stood down as part of an internal investigation.

Another inmate and a guard were also assaulted at Kempsey jail yesterday by a Muslim prisoner, but it not known if the attacker had extremist views.

The Sunday Telegraph can also reveal three other inmates were moved from Kariong jail, on the Central Coast, last week after allegedly threatening to stab other inmates who refused to convert to Islam.

Public Service Association Corrections Branch chairman Steve McMahon said the department had not taken the young inmate’s extremist views seriously and should have placed him in segregation.

“The 18-year-old, in our belief, had presented enough information and bad behaviour to have been segregated or, at the very least, he should have been placed in single cell,” Mr McMahon said.

“Had the information been passed on to senior officers and been dealt with correctly this would have been avoided.

“None of these things were done by management and he had certainly presented enough evidence he’s either a supporter or would be a participant.

“I don’t believe they are taking the (extremism) seriously enough and they’ve denied for close to 12 months now that there’s even been any issue around extremism in NSW prisons.”

Mr McMahon called on the department to take urgent and drastic action to control the rising threat of extremism within the state’s jails, including “clustering” extremist inmates together into a controlled environment.

“If they choose the model of clustering inmates who demonstrate this type of behaviour that they provide staff with the correct training and put in place the correct security regimes to achieve safe results,” he said.

“That is one of the methods that has demonstrated to be successful in other jurisdictions.”

It comes less than two months after The Sunday Telegraph revealed a specialist anti-terror unit had been created to hunt down Islamic State supporters trying to recruit criminals from inside the state’s prisons.

The NSW government is setting up a team in its existing prison Security Intelligence Unit “in response to the heightened security environment” to both monitor the radical prisoners and stop them luring in other criminals.

The Sunday Telegraph also revealed in October that IS supporters were threatening to behead NSW Corrective Services staff and inmates who do not convert to radical Islam inside jails.

A terror plot involving the kidnapping and beheading of prison guards was also uncovered by jail intelligence and the growing group was threatening to murder jail “infidels’’.

There are believed to be at least 30 members of the growing IS gang in Goulburn jail alone and all non-Muslims were last year reportedly removed from the “Lebanese’’ yard to make one section an exclusively Islamic prison pod.