Aimen Dean, who joined the Mujahideen at the age of fifteen and was later recruited into al-Qaeda by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who helped mastermind the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, said that he doesn’t "believe in deradicalisation".
The former terrorist, who went on to work as a spy for the British intelligence service MI6, told The Telegraph that Islamist terrorists are "extremely treacherous" and that if they don’t confess and help to do "damage" to their jihadist cause of their own volition like he did, "you can’t trust them."
"The only way [a jihadist] can demonstrate that they’ve renounced violent extremism is if they have sung like a canary and provided damaging intelligence on the networks that recruited them," said Dean.
Dean is calling for longer prison sentences for convicted terrorists, as well as "harsher" conditions so that terrorists are unable to "congregate" while imprisoned. He says that the attempts by the British government to deradicalise terrorists "are riddled with naivety and a lack of understanding."
"Use the deterrent of much longer sentences and make them serve the minimum in its entirety unless they show remorse and co-operation. If you need another Belmarsh, build one," he suggested.