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The Manchester Arena bomber’s brother has been given a spork to eat with in prison just days after allegedly attacking three guards in a kitchen area using “homemade weapons”.
The three prison officers were taken to hospital with “life-threatening” stab and burn wounds on Saturday after the prison officers’ union said Hashem Abedi attacked them using hot cooking oil and sharp objects at a high-security prison in County Durham.
Abedi – who is serving at least 55 years for the murders of 22 people after conspiring with his brother to launch the May 2017 atrocity – was one of the only prisoners in the country being held at a specialist separation unit for extremists at HMP Frankland.
According to a report in The Times, Abedi has now been moved back to a segregation cell at HMP Belmarsh in London, where he and two fellow inmates were convicted for attacking a prison officer inside the prison’s high-security unit in 2020.
The Independent understands that Abedi has been given a spork to eat with. The utensil is understood to be made out of plastic, and is taken away from Abedi outside of meal times.
The Times cited one unnamed prisons expert as warning: “Sporks can be sharpened. Right now he should have nothing in his possession capable of being used as a weapon.”
The Prison Officers’ Association (POA) said on Sunday that one female prison officer targeted in the alleged attack the previous day had been discharged from hospital at 4pm on Saturday.
Two others remained in hospital with serious injuries but had “stabilised”, said the union’s national chair Mark Fairhurst, who told the BBC: “They all have burns and scalds and the two in hospital have severe stab wounds.”
Counter Terrorism Policing’s northeast division is leading the investigation into the “serious assault”, and said on Saturday night that “the suspect has been detained”.
Abedi was handed a record-breaking 55-year minimum term for his role in the Manchester Arena bombing, avoiding a whole-life order because he was under 21 at the time.
Frankland is one of three prisons in England and Wales containing a separation unit intended to house the most dangerous prisoners in thrall to extremist ideologies, which were first announced in 2017 following a review into extremism in prisons.
While the three units have a total of 28 places, they were occupied by just nine men and the unit at HMP Full Sutton was closed entirely when the facilities were last inspected in 2022. The inspection report described the Frankland unit is on a narrow corridor with a small “room for association” and an area for prisoners to cook and prepare food.
Mr Fairhurst, of the POA, said on Sunday: “To allow that type of prisoner to access the kitchen and use the utensils that can be used as weapons against staff, and can inflict serious harm on staff, that needs to be removed immediately.
“We’re now worried about the knock-on effect of this and copycat incidents.”
Separately, it has emerged that specialist riot-trained officers were called to HMP Lowdham Grange on Tuesday to reports of disorder involving multiple prisoners, including inmates climbing onto roofs and netting.
Prisons minister James Timpson said: “Prison staff rapidly resolved this incident, and I would like to pay tribute to them for doing so. But this is another sign of the problems we are facing in our prisons, with prisons that are overcrowded and violent.
“This government is gripping the crisis we inherited. We are building 14,000 new prison places and we will reform sentencing. We will ensure our prisons encourage offenders to turn their backs on crime – and we will make them safer for our hardworking staff.”
It came as the latest government figures showed there are now fewer than 1,000 spaces left across the entire prison estate – and only 551 in men’s jails – just months after the government freed thousands of prisoners early to avert “a total breakdown in law and order”.
The Ministry of Justice said on Tuesday it had always been “clear that longer term action was required” to ease the capacity crisis, and said it had already delivered 900 new prison places, with 1,500 more opening this summer, including at the new HMP Millsike in the coming weeks.
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