London attacker released last year after terrorism offences, prompting recriminations

[rooster59]

London attacker released last year after terrorism offences, prompting recriminations

By Costas Pitas and Guy Faulconbridge

 

Forensics officers are seen near the site of an incident at London Bridge in London, Britain, November 29, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

 

LONDON (Reuters) - The 28-year-old British man who killed two people in a stabbing spree on London Bridge before police shot him dead had been released from prison after a previous conviction for terrorism offences, prompting recriminations ahead of an election.

 

Wearing a fake suicide vest and wielding knives, Usman Khan went on the rampage on Friday afternoon at a conference on criminal rehabilitation beside London Bridge. He was wrestled to the ground by bystanders and then shot dead by police.

 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has called a snap election for Dec. 12 and is due to host NATO leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump next week, said it was a terrorist attack and that Britain would never be cowed.

 

Khan, whose family is from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, was convicted in 2012 for his part in an al-Qaeda-inspired plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange. He was released in December 2018 subject to conditions.

 

"This individual was known to authorities, having been convicted in 2012 for terrorism offences," Britain's top counter-terrorism police officer, Neil Basu, said in a statement. "Clearly, a key line of inquiry now is to establish how he came to carry out this attack."

 

Two people - a man and a woman - were killed in the attack. In addition, a man and two women were injured and remain in hospital, Basu said.

 

Britain's opposition Labour Party, which trails the ruling Conservatives in opinion polls, criticised the government's record on crime on Saturday as police continued their investigation.

 

"There are big questions that need to be answered," London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the most senior opposition politician in Britain in a position of power, told Sky News.

 

"One of the important tools judges had when it came to dealing with dangerous, convicted criminals... was their ability to give an indeterminate sentence to protect the public," he said. "(That) was taken away from them by this government."

 

ELECTION ATTACK

 

During the 2017 election campaign, London Bridge was the scene of an attack when three militants drove a van into pedestrians and then attacked people in the surrounding area, killing eight people and injuring at least 48.

 

Islamic State said its fighters were responsible for that attack, but the British authorities have cast doubt on those claims. The 2017 attack focused attention on cuts to policing since the governing Conservatives took power in 2010.

 

Junior interior minister Brandon Lewis defended an independent decision taken a few weeks ago to lower Britain's terrorism threat level, but said sentencing rules needed to be reviewed.

 

"It is right that we do have to look again at the sentencing system around these kinds of violent crimes... We will want to move very swiftly," he said.

 

Friday's attack, just 13 days before an election that could decide the fate of Britain's exit from the European Union, prompted political leaders to scale back campaigning.

 

The campaign so far has focused on Brexit and the health service but is likely to include crime over the coming days as Johnson, who praised the bravery of bystanders who tackled the attacker, seeks to limit the fallout from the incident.

 

"This country will never be cowed, or divided, or intimidated by this sort of attack," he told reporters in Downing Street late on Friday.

 

(Editing by Sandra Maler, Leslie Adler, Toby Chopra and Frances Kerry)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-11-30

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[cmsally]

Quote

Since being released in December 2018 - having agreed to wear an electronic tag - Khan had been living in Stafford.

This is from the BBC news article. It would seem to insinuate that he should have been still wearing an electronic tag. It is also suggested he was attending an event at the Fishmongers Hall on the subject of prisoner rehabilitation!!

[Scott]

Here's a little about his victim:

 

https://news.sky.com/story/man-killed-in-london-bridge-terror-attack-named-11874449?fbclid=IwAR0ciA-kID4KJ2GKOYrvUTaVeHJepk3eqvXnb586J4D6SEjG59TVFZHv3HY

 

[Selatan]

Dress like this in Xinjiang, you either accept a small prison sentence or take the re-education offer.

[phantomfiddler]

Nice that the police didn,t mess around ????

[metisdead]

Off topic posts and replies have been removed. 

[Brigand]

Well, you can thank Tony Blair and his clowns for the early release nonsense. If you end up in jail for trying to pull this sort of stuff then it should be breaking rocks in the hot sun or sewing postal sacks on bread and water for a very, very long time ... or go live in a country that you will like rather than torture yourself in the land of the infidel (never really got that unless it's the sponging factor, of course). Europe is worried about whether terrorists are happy and not being discriminated against and too interested that your average Joe doesn't commit thought/speech crimes whilst our exterior rivals/enemies are heading leaps and bounds towards all sorts of dangerous things. Yeah, sure, going to work out just fine. Trouble is coming as the decay is rife and ripe for a huge change and all cultures/civilizations throughout history have thought it would be fine forever but never has proved so.

[IssanMichael]

AS i understand it,  Khan was originally classed as never to be released unless deemed no longer a threat but this condition was later lifted after an appeal.

 

I would like to know who allowed the appeal? who paid for the appeal? how much did the appeal cost the taxpayer. Just goes to show our "betters" are totally out of touch with the harsh reality of how things ought to be.

 

For the cost of keeping this filth alive, i would have rather spent the money on say children's healthcare.

[Opl]

2 minutes ago, IssanMichael said:

AS i understand it,  Khan was originally classed as never to be released unless deemed no longer a threat but this condition was later lifted after an appeal.

 

I would like to know who allowed the appeal? who paid for the appeal? how much did the appeal cost the taxpayer. Just goes to show our "betters" are totally out of touch with the harsh reality of how things ought to be.

 

For the cost of keeping this filth alive, i would have rather spent the money on say children's healthcare.

" “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.”

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.

[torturedsole]

Quote

The London Bridge attacker who murdered two innocent people in a knife rampage was a convicted terrorist banned from entering the capital.

Usman Khan, 28, was released from jail on condition that he obey 20 strict conditions, including not going to London, but probation bosses granted him an exemption to attend an ex-prisoners' conference organised by Cambridge University because they wrongly believed he had reformed.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7742387/London-Bridge-attacker-convicted-terrorist-Usman-Khan-banned-entering-capital.html

You really couldn't make it up.  

 

[tebee]

1 hour ago, Brigand said:

Well, you can thank Tony Blair and his clowns for the early release nonsense. If you end up in jail for trying to pull this sort of stuff then it should be breaking rocks in the hot sun or sewing postal sacks on bread and water for a very, very long time ... or go live in a country that you will like rather than torture yourself in the land of the infidel (never really got that unless it's the sponging factor, of course). Europe is worried about whether terrorists are happy and not being discriminated against and too interested that your average Joe doesn't commit thought/speech crimes whilst our exterior rivals/enemies are heading leaps and bounds towards all sorts of dangerous things. Yeah, sure, going to work out just fine. Trouble is coming as the decay is rife and ripe for a huge change and all cultures/civilizations throughout history have thought it would be fine forever but never has proved so.

Tony Blair's Government brought in indefinite detention for terrorist offences - it was the Tories who decided this was too expensive and replaced it with fixed sentences  were you were released after serving half of it whether you were deradicalized or not . This was to reduce prison number and save costs. 

 

Priti Patel's statement blaming Labour is a lie from start to finish.

[Orton Rd]

2 hours ago, phantomfiddler said:

Nice that the police didn,t mess around ????

Probably have Corbyn saying he should have been arrested not shot!

[TopDeadSenter]

16 minutes ago, IssanMichael said:

I would like to know who allowed the appeal? who paid for the appeal? how much did the appeal cost the taxpayer. Just goes to show our "betters" are totally out of touch with the harsh reality of how things ought to be.

"However, in 2013 - just over a year after Khan was jailed - Lord Justice Leveson, sitting with two other judges at the Court of Appeal, quashed that sentence.

They found the original trial judge had “wrongly characterised” Khan’s plans as more dangerous than some of the other defendants in his terror cell."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/30/leveson-ruling-opened-door-killers-early-release/

 

Secretary of justice that year was Chris Grayling.

 

In my mind this case is a no-brainer. Lord Leveson and Chris Grayling must serve life sentences with no chance of parole. Doing the murderers sentence by proxy if you like. They decided to plonk a whackjob jihadi into the midst of an unarmed public, it sounds like murder to me.

[Orton Rd]

13 minutes ago, tebee said:

Tony Blair's Government brought in indefinite detention for terrorist offences - it was the Tories who decided this was too expensive and replaced it with fixed sentences  were you were released after serving half of it whether you were deradicalized or not . This was to reduce prison number and save costs. 

 

Priti Patel's statement blaming Labour is a lie from start to finish.

Who was ever indefinitely detained when Blair was PM? he promised a crackdown on radical Schools Mosques and hate preachers after the London bus bombs, all talk and no action

[tebee]

Introduced in 2005 Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) is where a defendant convicted of certain serious offences was assessed by a court as dangerous – meaning they posed a significant risk of serious harm to the public – but the seriousness of the offence they had committed did not justify a life sentence, IPP could be imposed instead. The effect was similar to a life sentence. The Crown Court would set a minimum term (tariff) which a defendant would have to spend in prison. After serving the minimum term, he would have to satisfy the Parole Board that his imprisonment was no longer necessary for the protection of the public. If he did so, he would be released on licence for at least 10 years. If he couldn’t, he would stay in prison until he could, potentially forever.

 

This is the sentence  he was originally convicted with. 

 

[yogi100]

If he'd been deported as he should have been this would never have happened. But as usual the human rights of terrorists are the first priority in Madhouse Britain,

[yogi100]

13 minutes ago, TopDeadSenter said:

"However, in 2013 - just over a year after Khan was jailed - Lord Justice Leveson, sitting with two other judges at the Court of Appeal, quashed that sentence.

They found the original trial judge had “wrongly characterised” Khan’s plans as more dangerous than some of the other defendants in his terror cell."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/30/leveson-ruling-opened-door-killers-early-release/

 

Secretary of justice that year was Chris Grayling.

 

In my mind this case is a no-brainer. Lord Leveson and Chris Grayling must serve life sentences with no chance of parole. Doing the murderers sentence by proxy if you like. They decided to plonk a whackjob jihadi into the midst of an unarmed public, it sounds like murder to me.

Bang on the nail. Well said.

[DannyCarlton]

2 hours ago, Brigand said:

Well, you can thank Tony Blair and his clowns for the early release nonsense.

If you try very hard and manage to read the OP, you will see that the opposite is true. The indeterminate sentence policy (IPP) was started by the Labour government and was still in place when he was sentenced. Unfortunately, Cambell cancelled the policy and`causd Kahn's sentence to be changed to 16 years, and would automatically be released after serving half of his sentence, which is what happened.

 

But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a bit of mindless right wing rhetoric.

[DannyCarlton]

35 minutes ago, yogi100 said:

If he'd been deported as he should have been this would never have happened. But as usual the human rights of terrorists are the first priority in Madhouse Britain,

Deport him where? He was born and bred British.

[VocalNeal]

2 hours ago, phantomfiddler said:

Nice that the police didn,t mess around ????

UK police don't carry guns. But if they call for an armed response unit they (the armed response unit) don't mess around. They don't come armed with hand guns.

Next time in London you see a police car look and see if it has a yellow disk stuck on the rear window.

[natway09]

Hard to justify any form of release for a terrorist offence.

These radicals are impossible to reform as it is an ideology problem.

Oh, the death penalty helps but only if it is carried out

 

[torturedsole]

10 minutes ago, natway09 said:

Hard to justify any form of release for a terrorist offence.

These radicals are impossible to reform as it is an ideology problem.

Oh, the death penalty helps but only if it is carried out

The UK needs to adopt the Syrian model (which isn't, unfortunately, going to happen) and Amnesty International can do one:

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7733041/Jihadis-face-execution-without-trial-Syrian-jails-Assad-says-ISIS-members-hanged.html

[TopDeadSenter]

59 minutes ago, DannyCarlton said:

Deport him where? He was born and bred British.

You raise an interesting point. The obvious answer seeing as he identifies as a Pakistani muslim from Kashmir would have been to send him there. Who are you to tell him/them that you know better than them and they are in fact British not Pakistani? If you met Hannah Mouncey would you tell her that she is some guy called Callum - because as you said before, she was in fact born and bred Callum? Interesting aspects here in regards to fluidity in the progressive age, don't you think?

[Sujo]

31 minutes ago, TopDeadSenter said:

You raise an interesting point. The obvious answer seeing as he identifies as a Pakistani muslim from Kashmir would have been to send him there. Who are you to tell him/them that you know better than them and they are in fact British not Pakistani? If you met Hannah Mouncey would you tell her that she is some guy called Callum - because as you said before, she was in fact born and bred Callum? Interesting aspects here in regards to fluidity in the progressive age, don't you think?

How can you get pakistan to accept a non citizen?

[mrfill]

2 hours ago, Orton Rd said:

Who was ever indefinitely detained when Blair was PM? he promised a crackdown on radical Schools Mosques and hate preachers after the London bus bombs, all talk and no action

 

[DannyCarlton]

31 minutes ago, TopDeadSenter said:

You raise an interesting point. The obvious answer seeing as he identifies as a Pakistani muslim from Kashmir would have been to send him there. Who are you to tell him/them that you know better than them and they are in fact British not Pakistani? If you met Hannah Mouncey would you tell her that she is some guy called Callum - because as you said before, she was in fact born and bred Callum? Interesting aspects here in regards to fluidity in the progressive age, don't you think?

The problem with that hypothesis is that it fails at the first hurdle. It's the right wing tabloids in the UK who identifies as a Pakistani Muslim. Everyone else, probably even himself, identifies him as a British Moslem. I haven't yet seen any evidence that even suggests that he's even ever been to Pakistan.

 

This is the problem with the rhetoric of the right wing racists who are convinced that Brexit will sort all the problems with the likes of Kahn out.

 

1. It won't affect immigration from outside the EU in any way.

 

2. The majority of Islamic terrorists that have caused the most death and destruction in the UK are British born and bred. You can't deport a Brit from Britain.

[pacovl46]

Sad!

[DannyCarlton]

1 minute ago, pacovl46 said:

Why didn’t they deport him after he did his time for the previous conviction?

What part of "you can't deport a Brit from the UK" don't you understand?

[pacovl46]

1 minute ago, DannyCarlton said:

What part of "you can't deport a Brit from the UK" don't you understand?

My bad, I must have overlooked that part in the article.

[TopDeadSenter]

7 minutes ago, Sujo said:

How can you get pakistan to accept a non citizen?

Both his parents are Pakistani citizens. 

 

s.5 Citizenship by descent If one parent has Pakistani Citizenship then a person born to that parent may also get citizenship.

 

Otherwise there's always money. Maybe with-hold aid money until the Pakistani's accept them? That's how it works isn't it?

 

My response would be to ask what he was doing in the UK anyway. I learn from the newspapers that he only stayed in England because his unemployment allowances were bigger than his potential monthly salary in Kashmir for working. In short, he was not contributing much to England and cost us greatly. How about all the others like him? A review must be in order?

 

"Khan was recorded by police boasting about his UK benefits could him the same amount in a day that people in Kashmir in a month.

He said: "On jobseeker's allowance we can earn that, never mind working for that."

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10455338/london-bridge-terrorist-usman-khan/