Mrs Khyam: Absolutely. I think that the guards should be paying more attention, especially when they have been put on notice that this is the issue which is going on. How could they allow this to happen?

Al-Istiqamah: Incredibly, the prison officials are still saying that it is safe for your husband to come out of segregation?

Mrs Khyam: Exactly. They are telling him there is no reason to remain in solitary confinement. They are refusing to move my husband to another prison. They are saying that it’s a perfectly secure atmosphere!

Al-Istiqamah: The BBC reported last year that two inmates were moved following “a minor incident”. Yet they are refusing to move Omar Khyam, Eesa Barot or Hussein Osman?

Mrs Khyam: Yes. It makes you think doesn’t it? Why are they refusing to move them? I don’t believe we are asking for too much just for them to be safe.

Al-Istiqamah: So HMP Frankland has had three incidents in as many weeks now, involving three convicted Muslim prisoners from high-profile terror cases. They are still insisting there is no threat, and the incident with Eesa Barot was an isolated incident? It’s amazing, isn’t it?

Mrs Khyam: It is. Their solicitors are trying their best to get their clients moved by taking legal action.

Al-Istiqamah: Your husband’s solicitor is Imran Khan?

Mrs Khyam: That’s right.

Al-Istiqamah: He was on the BBC news and described these attacks and threats as being “vigilante justice”. Could you comment on the fact that prisoners see fit to take the law into their own hands whilst serving their sentences?

Mrs Khyam: I believe that no prisoner should judge another. They all have to live together. I don’t understand, as nobody has ever had a problem with my husband in Belmarsh or in Woodhill, both of which are high security prisons. My husband isn’t the argumentative type. He’s a very down-to-earth person. Whatever crime my husband was convicted of, it isn’t for other prisoners to judge him when many of them are murderers, rapists and paedophiles. My husband is a political prisoner.

Al-Istiqamah: Speaking of paedophiles, it is well known that prisons have a procedure of placing paedophiles on a separate wing to prevent other inmates attacking them. They don’t have to rely on going into segregation, which involves less time out of one’s cell etc.

 

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