Prevent Clears Bread-Knife Attacker for Streets
Serial violent offender Essa Suleiman slips Prevent net days before Golders Green attack
Prevent's 2020 clearance of indefinite prisoner Essa Suleiman precedes his attempted murders, joining a list of Islamist attackers who evaded the programme despite referrals. Shawcross data shows Islamist threats form 75% of probes but just 16% of cases, with focus shifted to non-violent ideologies.
Essa Suleiman stabbed a policeman and his dog with a bread knife in 2008. Wiltshire Police called him a very dangerous man and imposed an indefinite prison sentence. Prevent referred him in 2020 and closed the case that year.
Now charged with attempted murder of two Jewish men in Golders Green, Suleiman exposes Prevent’s core flaw. The programme deems high-risk individuals non-threats despite violent histories and mental health flags. This pattern repeats.
David Amess’s killer, Ali Harbi Ali, graduated from Prevent’s deradicalisation in 2021. He nodded through sessions, then stabbed the MP 21 times. Prevent saw no ongoing risk.
Khairi Saadallah stabbed three men to death in Reading in 2020, calling it religious jihad. Prevent dismissed his 2018 referral for lack of fixed ideology. Sudesh Amman and Ahmed Hassan struck after prior Prevent contact.
Usman Khan joined al-Qaeda plots, completed Prevent schemes as a success story, then killed two in 2019. All shared Islamist motivations Prevent overlooked.
Shawcross Review in 2023 quantified the mismatch. Islamist radicalisation formed just 16% of Prevent referrals in 2022, against 75% of active counter-terror probes. Islamism referrals plunged 72% from 2017 to 2022.
Misplaced Priorities
Far-right cases dominated referrals instead. Training fixated on socialism, anti-abortion stances, Brexit, gender-critical views, vaccine refusal. Even Shakespeare and Tolkien flagged as far-right risks.
TV like The Thick of It or Great British Railway Journeys drew scrutiny. Practitioners avoided “Islamist” to preserve community engagement. Timidity prevailed over threat assessment.
Prevent operates across governments since 2003. Labour launched it; Conservatives expanded deradicalisation. Failures span 20 years, with attacks from 2017 to 2026.
No leadership purge follows these lapses. Officials cite training gaps but retain positions. Accountability evaporates.
Ordinary citizens face the cost. Jewish men stabbed in Golders Green; MPs murdered at surgeries; park strollers killed. Prevent’s net catches ideologies, not knives.
Institutions prioritize optics over evidence. Security demands naming predominant threats—Islamism—but policy bends to cultural fears. Results: preventable violence.
This reveals Britain’s counter-terror apparatus as ornamental. Dangerous men cycle through referrals and reoffend. Public safety yields to institutional paralysis, unchanged by elections.
Commentary based on Golders Green exposes the lethal incompetence of Prevent at spiked-online.com.