Inside the Cage: How our most notorious prison became a hotbed for radicalisation

Inside the Cage: How our most notorious prison became a hotbed for radicalisation

WHEN more than 30 Muslim inmates get down on their prayer mats inside Goulburn’s Supermax prison and bow towards Mecca, it doesn’t much bother serial killer Ivan Milat.

As Ivan revealed in exclusive letters to news.com.au, he is one of just a handful of non-Muslim prisoners inside Australia’s most secure jail.

The seven times backpacker killer keeps to himself and leaves the convicted radical terrorists to their own, catered for by special prison diets, prison issue green prayer mats and copies of the Koran and the freedom to pray five times a day.

“Any special diets, Muslims etc. are catered for,” Milat told news.com.au.

“No guess work on that, once a person declares himself a Muslim then he always issued the religious friendly meals.

“Buy-ups cater for all cultures. The Muslims are entrenched in here only because they are here, they act no different in here or anywhere else.”

Not all the extremist Muslims in the High Risk Management Correctional Centre, Supermax’s official name, were convicted of plotting terrorist acts.

Some of them are murderers and originally from Christian families, who converted to Islam behind bars.

But as The Australian reported, Islam has become an obsession for the violent inmates who practice the religion inside Supermax.

For this reason Supermax, a jail inside NSW”s grimmest correctional complex 195km southwest of Sydney, is often referred to as “Super mosque”.

And as the national newspaper exclusively revealed, even the state’s prisons commissioner Peter Severin acknowledges that Supermax and its majority of inmates who are either convicted of terrorism offences or on remand awaiting trial, is a hotbed of radical Islam.

Mr Severin has recommended new laws be drawn up to detain up to 11 convicted terrorists beyond their prison terms.

Living inside Supermax — which has three separate units that house cells with have common day rooms shared by two or three inmates — are members of the 2005 Pendennis terrorist plot, and the newer wave of ISIS-inspired extremists.

But Supermax’s prisoner population also includes the most dangerous and cunning inmates in the country, who are considered likely to try to escape or to harm prison guards or bash other criminals.

The inmates have included Brothers 4 Life gang leader Bassam Hamzy, his gang rival Farhad Qaumi, and violent and unpredictable prisoner, Martin Toki, who is serving a minimum 22 years for his wife’s 2001 murder.

Execution style murderer Leith Marchant, serving 38 years, converted to Islam inside jail and became so radical that he shunned his mattress to sleep on bare concrete.

Supermax has 171 surveillance cameras and inmates are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week, inside their cold 3 metre by 4 metre cells.

To further reduce risk of escape attempts and violence, inmates are shuffled between cells every few weeks, they are X-rayed regularly and so is their food.

Ivan Milat, now aged 72 and who will die in jail, revealed that the atmosphere in Supermax is fairly calm because prison officers realise they have to keep the violent murderers on an even keel.

“Fairly ordinary most of the time,” Milat said, “management-keepers seemly realise it’s best to respect everyone then all is calm.

“They seemly (sic) vet the rednecks to watch their attitude in here.

“In reality in this unit, I’m the only odd one out, as they all associate with each other.”

But it is that association which may prove risky in the future when members of the Pendennis plot are inevitably released.

Nine Sydney and eight Melbourne men were arrested as part of Operation Pendennis, then Australia’s largest counter-terrorism investigation which broke up two jihadi cells with weapons, bomb-making equipment and plans for attacks in the state capitals.

One of the first Pendennis men to walk free from jail was Khaled Sharrouf, released after four years for having bomb-making materials in 2009.

In 2013, he fled Australia on a borrowed passport to fight with ISIS in Syria.

It is unclear whether Sharrouf, who took his family to Syria and famously posted online photographs of his son holding the severed heads of ISIS victims, has died in battle.

It is believed his comrade-in-arms, Mohamed Elomar, did perish in a rocket attack in Syria or Iraq.

Elomar’s uncle Mohamed Ali Elomar was the leader of the Sydney Pendennis terror cell and is serving a 21 year sentence in Supermax.

Khaled Cheiko and his nephew Moustafa Cheiko received 20 and 19 ½ years and are both in Supermax.