Hard men turn to Islam to cope with jail

In the Southern Tablelands, in the country's most secure jail, violent men with little to do and nothing to lose are turning to the Koran. Muhammad has come to monsters who may never go to a mosque.

Vester Fernando, of Walgett, got life for rape and murder eight years ago. Two years later he killed his co-offender while both were in Lithgow jail.

Ronald Priestly, of Moree, was in the prison art room when Vester stabbed his cousin, Brendan, to death. Two years earlier, Priestly was charged with murdering a drug dealer in Goulburn jail.

Jimmy Paulson, of Taree, organised a riot with Priestly at Goulburn three years ago. Paulson used a didgeridoo as a pile-driver against a guard's skull.

Peter Buchanan was blamed for attacking a prison officer at Lithgow a month after the Goulburn riot. Four years earlier he had been accused (then acquitted) of stabbing and bashing another prisoner to death at Long Bay. Like more than a fifth of NSW prisoners, Buchanan, Paulson, Priestly and Fernando are Aborigines.

All are jailed under A1 security classifications - one below the AA rung reserved for terrorists.

Housed in the High Risk Management Unit, or Super Max, at Goulburn jail, each has abandoned any notion of the Dreamtime when, spiritual Aborigines believe, the patterns and cycles of life were set.

Fernando, Priestly, Paulson and Buchanan have converted to Islam. In Super Max they bow to a fellow killer: an international fugitive, associate of terrorists and makeshift imam, Bassam Hamzy.

Each has shaved his head, grown a beard, and prays to Allah loudly enough for other inmates to complain. Their custodians keep mug shots taken before and after their conversion.

Watching on bemusedly in Super Max are backpacker killer Ivan Milat, contract killer Lindsay Rose and political assassin Phuong Ngo. Like Fernando, each is in jail until the day he dies.

Under the ethnic clustering ethos of NSW jails - in which Asians, Arabs and Islanders are separated - Aborigines are generally allowed to mix with other races. Their enemies are often Asian and their closest associations are with the Lebanese.

At Super Max their brothers in Islam include the alleged terrorist Faheem Lodhi, triple killer Michael Kanaan, his fellow gang members and killers Rabeeh Mawas and Wassim El-Assaad, killer Mohamed Rustom and pack rapist Bilal Skaf.

Three years ago Kanaan's brother was detected transferring money from Kanaan's bank account into those of Vester Fernando and Bassam Hamzy.

About a third of the three dozen inmates in Super Max are Muslim. Kanaan and El-Assaad were criminal gang associates of Saleh Jamal, who has been convicted of subversive activity in Lebanon.

The commander of security services in NSW jails, Brian Kelly, recently told Four Corners he had seen evidence of "efforts to convert inmates to Islam for probably the wrong reasons".

"We haven't really had evidence for terrorist purposes in itself but when it's for the wrong reason, and when it's targeting violent people, it is a concern," he said.

The Corrective Services Commissioner, Ron Woodham, told Four Corners he was worried about Aboriginal inmates serving long sentences converting to Islam. "Some of these people, ah, convert - in their mind they convert and they convert back," he said. "But we're worried where certain prisoners that are doing very long sentences, as an example, denounce their Aboriginality for Islam.

"We monitor them very closely … To us they're not terrorists in the real sense but they talk the talk. So if we had somebody who was recruiting in a prison … we keep them away from people that might be susceptible to the conversion."

Some of the alleged terrorists arrested in Sydney last week are on remand in Goulburn but not necessarily in Super Max. Most others are at Lithgow, some at Silverwater and Omar Baladjam, shot in the neck during the raids, is in Long Bay's hospital.

If convicted, they will each take one of the 40 unused places in the 75-cell Super Max, already on its way to becoming known as Goulburn's super mosque.