UK to open first prison designed to stop the radicalisation of inmates such as Westminster killer Khalid Masood

BRITAIN’S first “jihadi jail”, designed to stop the radicalisation of inmates like Westminster killer Khalid Masood, is to open.

Masood, 52, converted to Islam while locked up for a knife attack, going on to kill four people last month.

Now prison chiefs are spending £1million a year on three segregation units to keep the most dangerous Muslim radicals away from mainstream jail populations.

The first will be at Durham’s Frankland Prison where staff will watch up to 50 radicals.

Lee Rigby killer Michael Adebolajo was moved there amid fears he was trying to radicalise inmates in Belmarsh, South East London.

Two more units will follow, thought to be at HMP Woodhill, Milton Keynes, and Whitemoor, near March, Cambridgeshire.

Jackie Marshall, Prison Officers’ Association representative on the units, said: “Staffing levels have been agreed and there is very good training. It will be about awareness of signs of radicalisation.”

But POA general secretary Steve Gillan said: “We are sceptical on segregating. We have vast experience of that in Northern Ireland and it didn’t work there.”

The Muslim prison population in England and Wales soared from 5,202 in 2002 to 12,225 last year. There were 147 terrorist inmates with 137 identifying as Muslim.

The Ministry of Justice said: “We are committed to countering the spread of this poisonous ideology.”