CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - Australia is trying to figure out how to keep Muslim criminals from being radicalized in prison and emerging as potential terrorists, officials said Monday.

"We have seen an increase in extremist Islamic activity in some of our prisons," Attorney General Philip Ruddock said while opening a conference on the issue. "It is an urgent matter for us to identify ways in which we might intervene earlier in the path to radicalization that some might take."

"Our agencies tell us that there have been cases overseas where individuals have turned to extremism while in prison and have undertaken later terrorist attacks following their release, or have encouraged others to do so."

Officials specifically cited Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who emerged from jail as an Islamic radical to become head of al-Qaida in Iraq before he was killed in a U.S. bombing attack, and Richard Reid, who spent time in a British jail and is serving life in an American prison after trying to explode a bomb concealed in his shoe on a flight from France to the U.S.

Peter Atherton, deputy director of high-security prisons in England and Wales, told the conference there was evidence that Reid's radicalization may have started in jail and been completed outside.

He said it appears only small numbers of people have become radicalized in jail.
"But if we are complacent there is a risk it might happen," he said. "This is about how to combat that process developing."

Atherton said Britain have adopted a number of strategies including the use of specially recruited religious imams to preach a moderate version of Islam to prisoners.