Cameron: 'Drain the swamp' where extremists grow

LONDON, June 4 (UPI) -- Britain must halt the "conveyor belt" that converts young Muslims to violent extremists, Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday.

Cameron spoke to Parliament for the first time on the killing of Lee Rigby, a soldier who was hacked to death outside his barracks in South London, allegedly by two Muslim converts, The Daily Telegraph reported.

"Those who carried out this callous and abhorrent crime sought to justify their actions by an extremist ideology that perverts and warps Islam to create a culture of victimhood and justify violence," Cameron said. "We must confront this ideology in all its forms."

Cameron said Britain must "drain the swamp." He specifically talked about blocking extremists from gaining converts at universities and taking control of Islamic centers.

"It means going through all of these elements of the conveyor belt to radicalization and making sure we deal with them," he said.

Cameron said the country has done a lot, barring radical preachers from entering Britain and removing material promoting terrorism from the Internet or blocking access to overseas sites.

But he said more needs to be done. New steps include setting up a task force to examine regulations on charities to see if they need to be changed and to consider whether more could be done to stop groups that preach violence.

Cameron said the government is also looking at whether police and intelligence agencies can be given more power to monitor online activity without new legislation.