UK’s most violent prisoner Charles Bronson told Khan, ‘Just do it’ before killer attack
TERRORIST Usman Khan claimed notorious prisoner Charles Bronson urged him, “just do it” two weeks before he launched a deadly attack, an inquest has heard.
Khan, 28, had said he met Bronson, one of the UK’s most violent prisoners, when they were both inside a close supervision centre at a high-security jail.
The terrorist launched a knife rampage at Fishmongers’ Hall in London in November 2019 that left two people dead.
Khan stabbed Cambridge University’s Learning Together education project delegates Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, in the hall on London Bridge.
Wearing a fake suicide vest and armed with two knives, he murdered the pair and stabbed three other people before being shot dead by police.
Yesterday, at the inquests into Jack and Saskia’s deaths, Lisa Ghiggini, an employee at Learning Together, said she had several phone conversations with the terrorist after his release.
Henry Pitchers,
QC, for Saskia’s family, asked: “Bronson said to him words to the effect of, ‘If you’re going to do something, just do it’?”
Ms Ghiggini replied: “Yeah.” She added: “He’d mentioned Bronson before a lot. But it was the first time he mentioned that in that way.” No further context was given about what the “just do it” comment referred to during the hearing. The 68-year-old Bronson, left, has been in prison for the vast majority of the past 45 years for violent offences.
Khan got involved in Learning Together while serving a sentence for terror offences and had been invited to the fifth anniversary celebration in London.
Jurors also heard that Khan praised the education project – which brings together offenders and people from higher education to study alongside each other – as “family”.
In a chilling video message filmed just months before his attack, Khan said the programme was a lifeline for him during isolation in jail.
A short clip of the killer’s earlier “thank you” message was played and in it he said: “It was kind of family…It is making a difference, and I cannot stress that enough.”
Learning Together co-founder Dr Ruth Armstrong averted her eyes as the video was played.
She later sobbed as she told the inquest: “If we had been told of the information and intelligence available, Usman Khan would not have been invited to Fishmongers’ Hall.”
The inquest continues. his eight years of