UK to hold dangerous terrorists in isolation units: report

London: Britain will put around a dozen of the most dangerous jailed terrorists in isolated containment units in three prisons at a cost of around 1 million pounds a year, a media report said on Sunday.

The aim of the special cells is to isolate hard-core criminals from influencing and radicalising other inmates, 'The Sunday Times' reported.

"Preventing the most dangerous extremists from radicalising other prisoners is essential to the safe running of our prisons and fundamental to public protection," a spokesperson said.

The UK's Ministry of Justice expects to set up the containment units staffed in total by more than 40 officers at high-security facilities at Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes, Frankland in County Durham and Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire.

The move follows recommendations made by Ian Acheson, a former UK Home Office counter-terrorism official, who was commissioned in 2015 to investigate Islamist extremism in prisons.

There are around 12,500 Muslims in prisons in England and Wales, of whom roughly 130 are serving sentences for terrorist offences.

Anjem Choudary, one of the UK's most notorious Islamist hate preachers who was jailed last year for five and a half years for supporting the Islamic State terror group, is expected to be one of the inmates at the new containment units.

Michael Adebolajo, one of the two killers of the British soldier Lee Rigby in 2013, is expected to be the other.

The Ministry of Justice is yet to officially confirm details of the new scheme.