Islamist killer who won isolation payout held prison officer hostage

An Islamic extremist double-murderer who cost the taxpayer almost £240,000 when he sued over being kept in solitary confinement had previously held a prison officer hostage at knife point - and told him: ‘I’ve killed two people and I’ll kill you’.

Drug gangster turned jihadist sympathiser Fuad Awale, 38, used European rights laws to argue that his being locked up alone was unfair - despite the move following his hostage taking terror attack.

The full shocking details of that brutal siege in which Awale’s victim feared he would die make his High Court-approved compensation and costs settlement even more provocative.

Awale, who was serving life for the execution‑style killings of two teenagers, ambushed prison warden Richard Thompson inside Full Sutton prison, near York, in May 2013 - just days after soldier Lee Rigby was murdered in a jihadi street attack in south London.

Alongside fellow Islamist extremist Feroz Khan, Awale held Mr Thompson captive for five hours in which he was pinned to a chair, beaten and threatened with execution.

At one terrifying point, the Somali-born extremist pressed a makeshift blade to the officer’s throat, snarling: ‘Stop struggling. I’ve killed two people - I’ll kill you.’

Mr Thompson later recalled the ordeal in court, telling jurors: ‘I saw Awale playing with the knives. At one stage he was rubbing the knives together, rather like someone who was preparing to carve up a Sunday roast.’

Awale also asked convicted killer Khan: ‘Can I give him one in a non-vital area?’ and later said: ‘I thought his head would have come off by now.’

The officer said he had ‘every belief’ he would be killed if he did not do as ordered because of the ‘intensity and seriousness’ Awale had displayed.

Khan, who fractured Mr Thompson’s eye socket, planned the uprising after telling another guard that it was a Muslim’s duty to ‘fight until Sharia law is established in every country’.

The pair demanded the release of hate preacher Abu Qatada and Roshonara Choudhry, the student who stabbed Labour MP Stephen Timms at a constituency surgery in May 2010.

A court heard how Khan dictated their demands, while Awale asked him: ‘Should I write we are terrorists?’

Khan, now 38, who had previously murdered his friend in Bradford in 2007 over a personal dispute, replied: ‘Just write whatever you want’.

Khan then hijacked the prison tannoy system, greeting Muslim inmates with ‘peace be upon you’ before announcing he had taken a guard hostage and ordering the news to be spread to the media.

However, the protest was broken up after a hostage negotiator calmly told them their timing was ‘s***’ - because it was the night of the Britain’s Got Talent final.

Negotiator John Elliot told the Old Bailey in 2014: ‘Part of what I was aiming to do was to get them to think clearly about the demands they made, what the realistic prospect was for having them met.

 ‘I think I said that evening as well, it was X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent, one of those programmes, it was the final so people would be watching that rather than the news.

‘And in order to drive that home I remember saying to Mr Khan: ‘Your timing is s**t’.

Riot police eventually stormed in and freed Mr Thompson, who was taken to hospital. Another guard was left bruised and scratched.

Awale was handed six extra years on top of the 38-year minimum sentence he was already serving for shooting two teenagers dead in a drugs dispute.

Khan, who smirked when he was found guilty, received the same. Both were convicted of threatening to kill Mr Thompson.

Passing sentence, Judge Michael Topolski QC said the warden’s colleagues were ‘convinced he was going to die in horrific circumstances’.

He said: ‘This was a premeditated, well-planned and carefully orchestrated attack on a single and previously identified prison officer, who was, as such, performing a public duty and upon whom it has had a significant impact.’

Awale was later moved to a separation unit designed to stop extremist prisoners radicalising others. From 2021 he was held at HMP Woodhill, spending up to 23 hours a day alone and associating with no other inmates.

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Up to four officers with body-worn cameras were required to unlock his cell.

Awale has now used Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to claim his segregation - designed to prevent him harming officers and radicalising inmates - had breached his right to life and left him ‘severely depressed’.

Lawyers successfully argued the decisions to deny Awale access to other inmates were ‘opaque’, and that prison managers failed to regularly review his segregated conditions.

They said Awale had not been permitted to associate with any other inmates since March 17, 2023.

His legal team also argued the Ministry of Justice had failed to consider the high number of ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobic’ prisoners he might encounter in the supervision centre - further limiting the number of people he could associate with.

The claim was allowed by the High Court on all grounds.

David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, has now agreed to pay £7,500 compensation and £234,000 legal costs after a High Court judge said there had been a ‘significant degree of interference with the claimant’s private life’.

Robert Jenrick, the Conservative shadow justice secretary, who obtained details of the payout in a letter from Mr Lammy, branded the decision a ‘sick joke’.

He said: ‘Labour are cowing to terrorists and the human rights brigade. They must introduce emergency legislation to carve these monsters out of the ECHR immediately. If they don’t, we will as soon as Parliament returns.’

Mr Lammy, who revealed the payout to Awale in a letter today, suggested ministers were considering changes in the law to prevent extremist criminals from using the ECHR as a ‘barrier to us protecting national security’.