The threat of released terrorists

On the 12th anniversary of the 2005 countywide series bombings by Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, we should remind ourselves why the terror attack happened and why such attacks—coordinated or not—keep happening. The lesson to be taken from the recurrence of such murderous activities is that we need to double down on our efforts to counter radicalism and extremist ideologies that encourage terrorism. There is the also threat of new recruitment by the militant outfits, which remains a key challenge for the security officials and calls for a long-term counterterrorism strategy involving multiple parties, but out-of-jail convicts reportedly coming back to doing what they once did have appeared as a major risk in recent years.

Which begs the question: what are prison sentences for? If incarceration is only about punishment and deterrence, we're basically overlooking the fact that a terrorist can be involved in crimes again once out of jail, but if the purpose is to rehabilitate, we may have a real shot at de-radicalising them although the most hardened of them may never really change. There is also the issue of monitoring bailed-out terror suspects. According to The Daily Star, officials at the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit have kept under surveillance around 50 militant suspects who secured bail, but the whereabouts of about 500 or so released suspects remain unknown.

In the developed countries, significant resources are used to monitor terror suspects, and surely we can spend more resources than we do now on surveillance which will prove worthwhile in the long run. We also need to undertake de-radicalisation programmes for the terrorists in prison so that they can change and successfully reintegrate back into society once they are released.