Prison service draws up emergency plans over fears of Muslim plot to kidnap guards

Emergency plans have been drawn up over fears that a prison officer could be taken hostage by Muslim fanatics inside Britain's jails.

The dossier has been compiled in the past few months amid mounting racial tension in the prison system.

It details the action to be taken in the event of the 'worst-case scenario'. 

A senior prison source told the Mail that it was 'a real, live threat'.

Intelligence gathered from within Britain's eight top-security prisons claims specific threats to kidnap and behead an officer first surfaced six months ago at Whitemoor Prison in Cambridgeshire.

But sources say the growing concern over security and the threat to prison officers is not confined to one jail.

'This is a threat faced by officers in prisons across the country,' said the source.

'This is why the prison service is preparing direct intervention if ever a prison officer is taken hostage.'

Details of the contingency plans emerged just days after Muslim prisoners at Frankland prison in County Durham claimed they would kidnap and execute an officer and film it on mobile phones.

The threat was made during a four-hour riot in the prison's segregation unit last weekend.

Nine inmates went on the rampage causing £20,000 worth of damage while demanding that they be transferred to another prison.

Threat: Racial tension is rising at Whitemoor Prison

In a written statement seen by the Mail, one inmate who witnessed the disturbance said: 'They were shouting that they were going to cut off the head of one of the officers and film it on their phones.

'They have been bragging since they came on to the segregation unit how they are going to do it.'

It was the latest in a series of violent confrontations in the past 12 months at the category A jail.

In June 60 inmates fought running battles after the cell of a convicted Al Qaeda terrorist who stabbed a police officer to death was set ablaze.

Five prison officers were injured during the violence.

Sources there say the prison is 'like a powder-keg, just waiting to go off', adding that 'the tension is rising daily'.

In July last year Dhiren Barot, an Al Qaeda operative serving 30 years for a dirty-bomb plot, had a pot of boiling water poured over his head.

Barot's lawyer, Muddassar Arani, warned at the time that 'race riots' had erupted at the prison, describing it as 'an extremely dangerous environment for ethnic-minority prisoners'.

She claimed: 'People talk about radicalisation, but if there is a death that takes place in custody, then there will be a backlash.'

The source at Frankland said the prison was 'at boiling point'.

A Prison Service spokesman said: 'For security reasons, we do not comment on individual plans.'