CANBERRA, Australia, July 25 (UPI) -- Australia's attorney general has called for action to keep prisons from becoming breeding grounds for terrorists.
Philip Ruddock, speaking at an international conference by police and prison officials, said in Canberra Monday Australia had "seen an increase in extremist Islamic activity in some of our prisons.
"Our agencies tell us that there have been cases overseas where individuals have turned to extremism while in prison and have later undertaken terrorist attacks following their release, or have encouraged others to do so," he was quoted Tuesday as saying by The Australian.
Ruddock didn't give details of Islamic radicalization in Australian prisons, but there has been concern reported in New South Wales that aborigine inmates were being targeted for conversion to Islam for political purposes.
Peter Atherton, deputy director of high-security prisons in England and Wales, told the seminar there was evidence that Richard Reid, the Briton who tried to blow up an airliner with an explosive hidden in his shoe, had been set on the path to radicalism in prison in Britain.
Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, one of the Spaniards who allegedly supplied explosives to the Madrid bombers, was said to have adopted radical Islam while in jail.
Australia, in the wake of last year's London bombings by Muslim British residents and citizens, has cracked down on radical Islamic preaching in the country. It is also in the process of tightening up its national security laws.
About a dozen Australian residents are currently being tried for terror-related offences.
