04 June 2018•Update: 04 June 2018
By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal
LONDON
British Home Secretary Sajid Javid on Monday revealed new counter-terrorism strategy on Monday.
In his first major speech since he has taken the office in April 2018, Javid said a new counter-terrorism legislation will “amend existing terrorism .”
Javid said the new legislation will amend the “to update them for the digital age and to reflect contemporary patterns of radicalization and to close gaps in their scope.”
He said the legislation also aims to strengthen the sentencing framework for terrorism by increasing the maximum penalty for certain , to ensure that the punishment properly reflects the crime and to better prevent re-offending; enable further terrorism committed overseas to be prosecuted in the U.K. courts.”
Javid, the country’s first home secretary from a Muslim background, underlined the need “to offer compelling alternatives to the narrative of hate.”
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s Islamist extremists, with their claims that our shared values are incompatible with the religion of Islam; or the hateful extremists of the far right, who feed off the narratives of Islamists to attack our multi-ethnic society,” he said.
“These people want to destroy the values we hold dear, and undermine the freedoms that make us who we are.
“And there’s one other thing that Islamists and the far right have in common. As a Home Secretary with a name like Sajid David, I’m everything they despise.
"So the way I see it, I must be doing something right.”
Javid said the new legislation will have six key points, which are to disrupt threats earlier, to continue necessary support for counter-terrorism policing and intelligence services, to work more closely with international partners, to increase cooperation with key partners and the private sector, to work with technology companies to get terrorist material off the internet and to do more to prevent people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.
Also speaking on partnership with the EU on security issues, Javid said the U.K. has made it clear that it wants to remain part of the European security framework.
He said he wants a wide-ranging treaty on this.
The terror threat level in the U.K. is “severe”, which means that a terror attack is “highly likely.”
Last year, 36 people were killed and others were injured in terror attacks in London and Manchester.
