UK’s automatic prisoner release policy under scrutiny after freed jihadi slays 2
Following deadly London terror attack, ex-counterterrorism official warns criminal justice system ‘playing Russian roulette with lives’; PM Johnson says ‘system is not working’
The British government on Saturday vowed a “full review” after a convicted terrorist released early from prison stabbed two people to death near London Bridge on Friday. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who visited the scene of the attack Saturday, said those “who have committed terrorist offenses” should not be granted early release.
The horror at the previous day’s stabbing attack gave way Saturday to intense public scrutiny and criticism of a justice system that enabled the automatic release of the previously jailed attacker despite his 2012 conviction on terror charges.
The 28-year-old attacker Usman Khan had been conditionally released from jail last December after serving less than half of a 16-year sentence for terrorism.
The British Parole Board in a statement said it had no involvement in the release of Khan “who appears to have been released automatically on license (as required by law) without ever being referred to the Board.”
The UK’s release on license allows the automatic release of most prisoners at the halfway point of their sentence so long as they meet certain criteria and adhere to certain probationary terms.
Chris Phillips, former head of the UK national counterterrorism security office, made headlines in the British press when he told the Press Association news agency Saturday that the criminal justice system was “playing Russian roulette with people’s lives, letting convicted, known, radicalized Jihadi criminals walk about our streets.”
Phillips said: “We’re letting people out of prison, we’re convicting people for very, very serious offenses and then they are releasing them back into society when they are still radicalized. So how on Earth can we ever ask our police services and our security services to keep us safe?”
Johnson said it was a “mistake to allow serious and violent criminals to come out of prison early.” He said extra police patrols on the streets would be added “for reassurance purposes.”
“I have long said that this system simply isn’t working,” Johnson told the BBC in an on-camera interview from the scene. “It does not make sense or us as a society to put people who have committed terrorist offenses, serious violent offenses, out on early release. People should serve the term of their sentence. That’s our immediate takeaway from this.”
UK PM Boris Johnson says "it does not make sense" to allow those convicted of “serious violent offences” to be granted automatic early release, following Friday's attack on London Bridge by a man convicted of a terrorism offence in 2012
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In Khan’s 2012 sentencing the presiding judge noted that he and two other accomplices were in his judgement “more serious jihadis than the others” and said he believed “these offenders would remain, even after a lengthy term of imprisonment, of such a significant risk that the public could not be adequately protected by their being managed on license in the community, subject to conditions.”
Security Minister Brandon Lewis told Sky News the government would seek “to move very swiftly” to reexamine sentencing in order to protect the public from further attacks.
“After any incident like this, there has to be and always is, a full review and lessons-learned exercise taken forward,” he told BBC Radio. “We have to let the investigation complete itself first, but that will absolutely happen.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan told the BBC: “I don’t think it’s right that someone convicted of a serious offense like terrorism should be automatically released.”
Meanwhile, Sky News also reported that Khan was a student and friend of Islamist extremist Anjem Choudary, who was jailed for five-and-a-half years in 2016 but released last year under supervision — also at the halfway point of his sentence.
Choudary is the former head in Britain of Islam4UK or al-Muhajiroun, a now-banned group that called for Islamic law in the UK. Prior to his jailing, he had become Britain’s most prominent radical preacher.
Among those radicalized by Muhajiroun were the suicide bombers who killed 52 people on London’s public transport system in July 2005, and the men who murdered soldier Lee Rigby in the capital in 2013, police say.
Choudary had broadcast speeches recognizing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the leader of the Islamic State, and in 2011 organized a pro-Osama bin Laden event in London.
In a 2014 interview with AFP, Choudary called on Western journalists, civilians and troops in “Muslim countries” to “completely withdraw and allow us to implement the Sharia.”
Former police terror chief Richard Walton called him a “hardened dangerous terrorist” who had had a “huge influence on Islamist extremism in this country.”
During Friday’s attack near and at London Bridge, Khan, wearing a fake explosive vest, stabbed five people before being tackled by members of the public and then fatally shot by officers.
Metropolitan Police Chief Cressida Dick said two stabbing victims died and three injured people were treated in hospitals after the attack, which unfolded just yards from the site of a deadly 2017 van and knife rampage.
The deceased victims were reported to be a man and a woman but have not yet been identified.
Health officials said one of the injured was in critical but stable condition, one was stable and the third had less serious injuries.
Khan had been living in the Staffordshire area of central England, police said. Authorities were carrying searches in Staffordshire in connection to the attack.
Police said Khan was convicted in 2012 of terrorism offenses including an al-Qaeda inspired plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
He was released in December 2018 on license. Several British media outlets reported that he was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet at the time of Friday’s attack.
London police counterterrorism chief Neil Basu said Khan was attending a London event at Fishmongers’ Hall hosted by Learning Together — a Cambridge-based organization that works to educate prisoners — when he launched the attack.
“We believe the attack began inside before he left the building and proceeded onto the bridge,” he said. Basu said the suspect appeared to be wearing a bomb vest but it turned out to be “a hoax explosive device.”
Cars and buses on the busy bridge stood abandoned after the shooting, with a white truck stopped diagonally across the lanes. London Bridge station, one of the city’s busiest rail hubs, was closed for several hours after the attack.
As police cleared the streets, staff in shops and restaurants ushered customers into storerooms and basements. Some had been through similar traumatic events in June 2017, when eight people died in a van and knife attack launched by three people inspired by the Islamic State group. The attackers ran down people on the bridge, killing two, before fatally stabbing several people in nearby Borough Market.
That fatal attack took place days before a general election. Britons are due to go to the polls again on December 12.
Security officials earlier this month downgraded Britain’s terrorism threat level from “severe” to “substantial,” which means an attack is seen as “likely” rather than “highly likely.” The assessment was made by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, an independent expert body that evaluates intelligence, terrorist capability and intentions.
The UK’s terror threat was last listed as “substantial” in August 2014; since then it has held steady at “severe,” briefly rising to “critical” in May and September 2017.
