The London Bridge stabber masqueraded as a reformed jihadist, claiming his terrorist days were behind him and begging to be de-radicalized.
Yet less than a year after convicted bomb plotter Usman Khan was released from prison, having served only half of a 16-year sentence for his part in an al Qaeda scheme to blow up London landmarks, he killed two people, including a young coordinator of the rehab program he so wanted to join.
Another staff member of the program, called Learning Together, was killed, and three others were wounded.
Khan, 28, who was wielding two kitchen knives and wearing a fake suicide vest, would have wreaked more havoc if heroic civilians hadn’t taken him down before he was shot dead by police.
Khan, wearing an electronic monitor from his 2018 release, acted alone, London police said.
Nevertheless, ISIS claimed responsibility for the carnage, tweeting that Khan had killed in response to its calls to target countries fighting the jihadist group.
On Saturday, as Britain mourned the victims, many expressed outrage that Khan had been walking the streets at all.
“We’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives, letting convicted, known, radicalized jihadi criminals walk about our streets,” said Chris Phillips, the former head of Britain’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office.
The plot that sent Khan to prison “was described as one of the most significant terrorist plots in British history,” according to the Sunday Times of London. Khan, just 19 at the time, “was considered by the judge to be a ‘more serious jihadi’ than many of his fellow gang members when he was jailed indefinitely for public protection.”
Khan admitted to a charge of engaging in conduct for the preparation of acts of terrorism. He had been secretly taped plotting and talking about martyrdom.
But once behind bars, the high school dropout, who was known to follow radical cleric Anjem Choudary and suspected of planning to create a terror training camp on family land in Kashmir, wrote a letter claiming he was reformed, and requested a de-radicalization class.
“I would like to do such a course so I can prove to the authorities, my family and soicity [sic] in general that I don’t carry the views I had before my arrest and also I can prove that at the time I was immature,” he wrote in October 2012. “And now I am much more mature and want to live my life as a good Muslim and also a good citizen of Britain.”
Khan hoodwinked authorities again in 2013, The Times of London wrote, when he won an appeal of his indeterminate sentence and was granted a 16-year term, allowing his early parole.
And Khan is not unique. As many as 70 terrorists have been released from Britain’s jails, the Telegraph reported.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who visited the scene at London Bridge Saturday, said he had “long argued” that it was a “mistake to allow serious and violent criminals to come out of prison early.”
The Conservative Party leader, who is in the midst of an election campaign, said the criminal justice system “simply isn’t working.”
Johnson’s rival, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who also visited the scene Saturday, said the nation’s Probation Office and Parole Board should have had a role in the decision to release Khan.
“We have to ensure that the public are safe,” he said. “That means supervision of prisoners in prison but it also means supervision of ex-prisoners when they are released ahead of the completion of their sentence, to have tough supervision of them to make sure this kind of danger is not played out on the public in the future.”
But David Merritt, the father of victim Jack Merritt, said his son would not have supported the backlash. He described him as a “champion for underdogs everywhere” and especially for the incarcerated.
The second victim has not yet been identified. The three wounded remained in the hospital, including a man in a medically induced coma.
Queen Elizabeth II said in a statement that she and her husband, Prince Philip, were sending their thoughts to everyone affected by the “terrible violence.”
Security officials earlier this month had downgraded Britain’s terrorism threat level from “severe” to “substantial.”
With Post wires