JIHADI NUT WALKED FREE
accused of playing “Russian roulette” with people’s lives after it emerged Jack’s murderer was released early from prison last year.
Usman Khan killed two people and injured three in Friday’s horrific attack near London Bridge just 12 months after being freed.
Khan was released halfway through a
16-year sentence for a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange and the US Embassy.
The former head of the UK National Counter Terrorism Security, Chris Phillips, said:
“The criminal justice system needs to look at itself.
“We’re letting people out of prison, we’re convicting people for very, very serious offences and then they are releasing them back into society when they are still radicalised.
“I’ve said it a few times today, we’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives, letting convicted, known, radicalised jihadi criminals walk about.”
UK-born Khan was charged in December
2010 and convicted in February 2012 of terrorism offences but released from jail last December on licence.
Judge Mr Justice Wilkie gave the jihadist an indeterminate sentence with at least eight years, saying he should not be released until he was no longer a threat to the public. But the sentence was quashed at the Court of Appeal in April 2013, claiming Khan may have just been “talking big” when he spoke of blowing up the Stock Exchange. He was given a determinate 16-year jail term instead, meaning he would be automatically released after eight years. It emerged Khan was a student and personal friend of hate preacher Anjem Choudary, pictured inset.
Khan had spent years preaching on stalls linked to al-Muhajiroun, the banned terror group once led by Choudary. Anti-terror police have raided a house in the Staffordshire area linked to the killer, believed to be a bail hostel for offenders.
The parents of Sara Zelenak, one of the victims of the 2017 London Bridge attack, last night said authorities had learned nothing since their daughter’s death. Mum Julie Wallace, 52, said: “I don’t think they’ve made a good choice. It’s not strong enough, they have got to look after people.”