Terrorist virus thrives on judicial system’s weakness

Armed police in Streatham, south London, where Sudesh Amman, 20, left, was shot dead after stabbing two people. Picture: Supplied

The 11 Islamist extremist terrorists due to be released from Australia’s prisons this year would live among us like a deadly virus unless they are kept behind bars or serve their jail terms and are deported, at least the dual nationals among them. The terrorist attacks in London, by Sudesh Amman this month, and by Usman Khan last November, demonstrate that like any infection the Islamist extremist insurgency will penetrate and exploit weak systems wherever they can be found.

Australia’s terrorist threat level remains at “probable”. Andrew Hastie, chairman of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, explains this means a significant number of individuals retain the intent and capability to conduct a terrorist attack here.

While the impact of an attack by one of these terrorists might mean a large loss of life, the financial cost of 24/7 surveillance on their release was estimated six years back at $8m a year for each person of interest.

Australia has legislation that allows a state or territory judicial system to decide to keep these convicted terrorists in prison for a further three years at the end of their head sentence, many of which appear unduly short.

The almost unique challenge for us is that no one in Australia’s legal system can guarantee these convicted terrorists, once released, will not launch or help plan another attack. And no one will be held accountable if they do.

In Britain, the response of Boris Johnson’s government has been to introduce emergency legislation. Anyone convicted of a terrorism offence will have to serve at least two-thirds of their sentence and then be subject to a risk assessment by the parole board before being freed. Nonetheless, a radical, violent Islamist extremist whose centre of gravity is metaphysical and who loves death more than we love life, may have to wait only a little longer with his jihadist cellmates. Last year EU counter-terrorism co-ordinator Gilles de Kerchove said Britain was home to the highest known number of Islamist radicals in Europe — between 20,000 and 25,000 — with 3000 considered a direct threat by MI5 and 500 under constant surveillance. The virus is well and truly embedded within that community.

One of the remedies pushed by many academics and well-meaning social scientists are the programs countering violent extrem­ism. In 2018 David Elliott, NSW counter-terrorism and corrections minister at the time, said juvenile detainees would undergo deradicalisation programs similar to those in adult jails in a $6m scheme. Yet he admitted “there is no evidence anywhere in the world that deradicalisation programs have been working”.

Whether suicide bombings or suicidal knifing rampages — it is the terrorists’ plan to be killed by police during these — this violent insurgency understands the asymmetric value of such attacks. First, they inflict the heaviest losses on us and the lowest cost on the enemy. Second, even when the victims are small in number and the method simple, it torments us because terrorism is as much moral and mental as it is physical. And third, there is the paradox of phenomenon’s capacity to replicate through self-sacrifice. When one dies it inspires like-minded extremists to take action.

It’s good that Islamic State’s so-called caliphate has been destroyed, but the attacks in London and arrests of three people in counter-terrorism raids in Sydney last year demonstrate the pathogen requires only the smallest fragments to regenerate. Like some diseases, violent Islamists are not managed via a conventional command and control structure. Viruses don’t wait for instructions or permission. So we must continue to neutralise terrorist leaders wherever they can be found. Equal force should be applied to minimising the weaknesses in our system that terrorists find so attractive.

Islamist extremism has been clever at constructing a borderless intergenerational identity. According to respected marine biologist Rafe Sagarin, from bacteria to humans, identity is a powerful evolutionary force. Oddly, some within the West welcome the nonviolent Islamist extremist identity into our system, perhaps convinced that in our hearts we are all the same. But certain people have different values. Others may believe acceptance of the nonviolent demands will build immunity and understanding. But knife-wielding terrorists appear not to be so discerning.

Consider how our own immune system can be tricked into rejecting healthy organs or tissues, otherwise known as an auto-immune disorder. An extension of this is how those who question the role of Islamist extremism in Western society are accused of being Islamophobic.

Islamophobia is one of those woke phrases confected in this era of outrage. It combines those who target believers (a hate crime to be condemned) and those who would critique a religion, which is a right of anyone in our democracy. Viruses love it when the immune system turns on itself. And so does the Islamist extremist global insurgency.

Despite the ideology’s incompatibility with Western democratic values its supporters co-opt those values to protect themselves. It is also how the influenza virus masks itself in a protein that is then accepted within the target system. Take the campaign to repatriate Western female Islamic State members. Now they are cloaking themselves with our values to obtain acceptance back into our system. Let’s not fall for this manipulation. Let’s stop fussing over those in Syria.

When confronted with the anarchists in the 1900s terrorist phenomenon of his time, US president Theodore Roosevelt said: “The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind and is a deeper degree of criminality than any other.”

That may make some squirm, and melt the minds of all those little snowflakes out there, but without such an unequivocal position we will always be seen as weak by a virus that only understands strength.

Jason Thomas teaches risk management at Swinburne University of Technology and is director of Frontier Assessments.