Over eighteen years after 9/11, western judiciaries are struggling to keep dangerous jihadists behind bars. In some cases, as the recent London Bridge attack showed, automatic parole systems can release dangerous terrorists after only a few years of detention. Johnson is right that these laws, made for ‘common’ criminals need to be changed to reflect the reality of thousands of islamists that only got more radicalised in prison. If you couple this with the well known phenomenon of the Syrian returnees, western nations will have to deal with a very dangerous group of people that in many cases have European passports and that have had a lot of time to coordinate with like minded terrorists both in their cells and on the net.
It is therefore no wonder then, that Guantanamo still has detainees dating from 9/11. Western democracies are facing a conflict of values: will they change the rules to keep their streets safe or will they stick to their liberal views and pay the prices with convicted jihadists being able to continue to terrorise their citizens?